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i 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 






Copyright, 1903, by C. M. Bell Photographic Co. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT TO-DAY. 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



A PORTRAIT SKETCH 



BY 

FRANCIS E. LEUPP 



ILLUSTRATED 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK MCMIV 




&£ 
&& 

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Copyright, 1904, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published, February, 1904 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



When I was asked to write a book about 
Theodore Roosevelt I consented, with the 
stipulation that it should not be a biography. 
All I was willing to attempt was an unpreten- 
tious portrait sketch of a man as he had re- 
vealed himself to me not only under the lights 
of an exceptionally brilliant public career, but 
by a long period of pretty close personal con- 
tact. The delicacy of such an undertaking I 
did not realize till several chapters had taken 
shape and I began to feel misgivings as to my 
right to put to literary use a knowledge which, 
though it was legitimately mine, had come to 
me through an intercourse untrammeled by any 
thought of type or printer's ink. But I per- 
sisted and finished my task, in the hope that a 
friendship which had survived so many years 
of storm and stress, such differences of opinion, 
and so much plain speech on both sides might 
be trusted to save me from any very grave sins, 

v 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



and insure forgiveness of my lesser shortcom- 
ings. 

In justice to all concerned it should be noted 
that no one but myself is responsible for the 
contents of this volume. Not a line of it has 
been submitted to Mr. Roosevelt for his ap- 
proval; he is not my authority for a single state- 
ment about himself or anybody else except 
where I have tried to quote him, and even my 
citations of his words are wholly from memory. 
If he has been misrepresented anywhere the 
fault is mine, not his, since I have scrupulously 
avoided consulting him on subjects which I 
could treat frankly on my own account, but 
which it might embarrass him to discuss. 
Moreover, in trying to state his position on 
public questions with absolute fairness, I would 
not be understood as always sharing it. The 
sole point kept in view has been to write facts, 
leaving the morals to draw themselves. Know- 
ing that it is the subject, and not the author, in 
whom the public is interested, I have striven 
to keep my picture as free as possible from di- 
dactic color. 

This series of disclaimers would be incom- 
plete if I did not forestall the solicitude of sun- 
dry critics by absolving the New York Evening 

vi 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



Post from all accountability for my treatment 
of Mr. Roosevelt, his ideas and his methods. 
As the fruit of thirty years' association with that 
journal editorially and as correspondent, I can 
pay it no higher tribute than to say that it is 
wholly sincere in its desire to give all sides a 
fair hearing, and that it looks to the trusted 
members of its staff for the same freedom of 
thought and candor of expression which it de- 
mands as a right for itself. 

No one could be more sensible of the in- 
adequacy of this book than he who wrote it at 
brief notice, and in the intervals of a most ab- 
sorbing calling. That he has been able to turn 
out even so imperfect a product under such con- 
ditions, his thanks are due to a little home circle 
whose members vied with each other in pro- 
tecting him from needless interruptions and 
smoothing in their several ways the rough places 
in the path of authorship. 



F. E. L. 



Washington, January 1 , 1904. 



Vll 



CHRONOLOGY 



Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, was de- 
scended from Claes Martenzoon Van Rosevelt, who migrated from 
Holland to America in 1 649 ; through other ancestors acquired 
Scotch-Irish blood ; was the son of Theodore Roosevelt of New 
York city, and Martha Bulloch of Roswell, Ga. 

Born in New York city, October 27, 1858. 

Graduated at Harvard University, 1880. 

Served in the New York State Assembly, 1882, 1883, 1884. 

Chairman of New York delegation to Republican National 
Convention, 1884. 

Defeated as Republican candidate for Mayor of New York 
city, 1886. 

United States Civil-Service Commissioner, 1889 to 1895. 

President of Board of Police Commissioners, New York city, 
1895 to 1897. 

Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1897—98. 
Lieutenant- Colonel and Colonel of the First Volunteer Cavalry 
("Rough Riders") Regiment in the war with Spain, 1898. 
Governor of New York, 1 899-1 900. 
Vice-President of the United States, 1901. 

President of the United States since the death of President 
McKinley, September 14, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

THE KEY TO A REMARKABLE CAREER 

PAGE 

Reversing the tide of fate — A good use for disappoint- 
ments — "Going ahead" — The Isthmian imbroglio — 
One of four alternatives — Warning to Turkey — A recipe 
for success 3 

CHAPTER II 

AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 

Republican crisis of 1884 — First break with the Independ- 
ents — A party man still — Running for Governor — 
Why a program failed — Second break with the Inde- 
pendents — A hitherto unpublished letter 16 

CHAPTER III 

KNIGHT ERRANT OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM 

How Mr. Roosevelt became Commissioner — Publicity for 
the merit system — Bringing up the Southern quotas — 
Tilts with Congress — Competitive examinations and the 
police 32 

xi 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

A FEW FRIENDS 

PAGE 

Premature alarm of the conservatives — Senator Lodge's rela- 
tions with the President — Other men who have helped — 
"My regiment" — Familiarity and faith — The case of 
Ben Daniels 53 



CHAPTER V 

PRESIDENT AND CABINET 

Official families by inheritance — First break in the Roosevelt 
Cabinet — What led to Mr. Gage's resignation — A quaint 
tribute — Other changes — A new chair at the table, and 
how filled 7* 

CHAPTER VI 

TWO COUNCILORS IN PARTICULAR 

Secretary Shaw's personality — His rise in the world — A 
Yankee who " gets there " — Postmaster-General Payne — 
The Cabinet politician — Faulty training for an investi- 
gator °3 

CHAPTER VII 

"THE LARGER GOOD " AND "THE BEST HE COULD " 

The Cuban reciprocity fight — Buying coalers for the navy — 
An attorney rebuked — New York liquor law enforce- 
ment — The Shidy case — Keeping faith with a scamp . .103 

xii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

OUR BOSS SYSTEM AND MR. PLATT 

PAGE 

Overgrowth of Senate influence — A middle course — Typ- 
ical cases — How bad selections are foisted on a Presi- 
dent — New York custom-house changes — The Immigra- 
tion Service controversy — A clean sweep 121 

CHAPTER IX 

SOME OF THE OTHER BOSSES 

State dictators in the Senate — Quay and his machine — 
The typical case of McClain and McCoach — Cold 
comfort for warring bosses — Addicksism, Byrne, and 
Miss Todd 137 

CHAPTER X 

THE SECOND-TERM IDEA 

The President's desire for reelection — Republican rivals who 
dropped out — The Hanna "boom" — Real loyalty 
appreciated — Cleveland, Gray, and the coal strike 
arbitration 156 

CHAPTER XI 

A FIGHTER AND HIS METHODS 

Love ot matching skill and strength — A generous adver- 
sary — The census spoilsmen's grievance — Harun-al- 
Raschid and the police — How a demonstration failed . . 176 

xiii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XII 

WAR AND PEACE 



PAGE 



A much misunderstood philosophy — Manly sports as a life 
preparation — Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward Spain — 
The Monroe doctrine, the Hague court, and the Kishenev 
petition 193 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 

Two questions that blend — A policy never before tried — Ideal 
conditions for inaugurating it — The Booker Washington 
dinner incident — A needless uproar — Dr. Crum's collec- 
torship 213 

CHAPTER XIV 

CAPITAL AND LABOR 

Combination in both fields — Labor unions and the civil serv- 
ice — The Miller case — Overlooked facts in the coal 
arbitration — Things a demagogue would not have 
done 232 

CHAPTER XV 

TRUSTS, TARIFF AND IMPERIALISM 

Why one corporation is sued and another not — Prudential 
value of publicity — Free-trader versus Republican — A 
Philippine forecast sustained — Tropical colonies and the 
flag 250 

XIV 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XVI 

A CREATURE OF IMPULSE 

PAGE 

Sudden whim or quick judgment ? — How the coal arbitra- 
tion was set afoot — The franchise tax — A Jew-baiting 
campaign flattened out — Vigorous indorsement on a pardon 
petition 272 

CHAPTER XVII 

THE MAN OF MANY PARTS 

A marvel of versatility — Spoiling an embryo naturalist — 
Perils of an emphatic style — Masterful manners — Mr. 
Roosevelt's work as an author — Method of composi- 
tion — His newspaper reading 290 

CHAPTER XVIII 

SOME CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 

Horsemanship and hard tramps — The family man at home 
— Rollicking with the children — A champion of chaste 
living — White House hospitalities — The religious life of 
the President 3°9 

CHAPTER XIX 

CONCLUSION 

Unique feature of Mr. Roosevelt's career — Purpose of this 

review — The future 3 2 5 



XV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Theodore Roosevelt to-day .... 

Theodore Roosevelt at twenty-four 

Colonel of the Rough Riders 

The President's home, Oyster Bay, Long Island 

The gun room at Sagamore Hill 

An afternoon gallop ..... 

Speaking to the people from a car platform . 

The Roosevelt family .... 



Frontispiece 



20 
62 
IOO 
150 
I98 
252 

3H 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



CHAPTER I 

THE KEY TO A REMARKABLE CAREER 

Reversing the tide of rate — A good use for disappointments — 
"Going ahead" — The Isthmian imbroglio — One of four 
alternatives — Warning to Turkey — A recipe for success. 

WHEN Senator Depew, in his speech nom- 
inating Theodore Roosevelt for Vice-President, 
called him "an Eastern man with Western char- 
acteristics," he stated only a half-truth. He 
might have described his candidate as the great- 
est living all-around antithesis. Reared amid 
conditions which pointed to a life of leisure, 
Theodore Roosevelt voluntarily chose a life of 
hard work. Educated in a social atmosphere 
in which practical politics is numbered among 
the vices, he deliberately elected to become a 
politician. Physically a weakling in his boy- 
hood, he has acquired, by Spartan training, a 
body like spring steel. Born with the mental 
and moral equipment of an independent, he has 
made of himself, by unremitting endeavor, ? 
pretty good partizan. 

3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Let it be noted that these changes have been 
wrought by the sheer exercise of will. The 
man has conquered nature. Every fresh victory 
has strengthened his self-confidence, and this 
confidence has furnished the propulsive force 
for his next assault. It is said that Heaven helps 
him who helps himself. Heaven has certainly 
been very kind to Theodore Roosevelt; for in 
those few instances where he has helped himself 
to the best of his ability and failed, some other 
power has intervened to turn defeat into a sur- 
prising success. Had he been elected Mayor 
of the city of New York when he ran in 1886, he 
would undoubtedly have followed the local 
fashion of the day and sought a reelection at 
the end of his term, and thus been carried too 
far out of the track of Federal politics to have 
become a candidate for Assistant Secretary of 
State under President Harrison. Had Secre- 
tary Blaine favored his appointment as Assist- 
ant Secretary of State, the President would un- 
doubtedly have appointed him, with the result 
that he would have been kept in perpetual 
eclipse by the greater luminary at the head of 
the department, as Mr. Wharton was; instead, 
a Civil-Service commissionership was offered 
him and he accepted it, and the free swing he 

4 



GOOD USE FOR DISAPPOINTMENTS 

had in that place enabled him to become a 
national character and paved the way for his 
later promotions. His old thirst to have a hand 
in the government of his native city came back 
to him after he had passed six years at Wash- 
ington, and he yielded to Mayor Strong's solici- 
tation to become a member of the reorganized 
Police Commission. The result was disappoint- 
ing, however; for, in spite of a series of notable 
reforms, the influence of one of his colleagues 
blocked so many of his projects for improve- 
ment that he was glad of the chance afforded by 
President McKinley's election to go to Wash- 
ington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 
this position he was largely instrumental in 
bringing the Cuban controversy to a head and 
making ready for his experience as a soldier. 
Again observe the part played by mischance. 
If, when war came, he had obtained the place 
on the staff of General Fitzhugh Lee for which 
he originally applied, he would not have or- 
ganized the Rough Riders and become the most 
picturesque figure in the volunteer army; and 
it was on his war record that he made his cam- 
paign for the governorship of New York. 

Then came another bitter disappointment. 
He craved a second term as Governor. The 

5 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Republican managers in the State at large were 
resolved that he should not have it; for this 
reason, and in defiance of his protests, they per- 
sisted in pressing him for the vice-presidency. 
Never was honor forced upon an unwilling 
recipient as that was. He pleaded with his 
friends not to let him be sacrificed; he fought 
off every suggestion with declarations that he 
could not and would not accept the nomination; 
it was an open secret that neither Mr. McKin- 
ley nor the recognized leaders in the convention 
wished him on the ticket at the outset. But the 
New York delegation, for reasons of self-inter- 
est, were bound that he should be nominated; 
and delegation after delegation from the Missis- 
sippi Valley — where, report said, Bryanism had 
taken a fresh lease of life — seconded the efforts 
of New York on the ground that Roosevelt's 
was the only name they could conjure with in 
this emergency. He was elected to the office 
he did not wish, and had used every device 
except flight to avoid. Once more, though 
through a tragic and abhorrent medium, the 
hand of destiny performed its work, raising him 
to the highest place in a nation of eighty million 
people. 

Call these reversals "luck," if you will; the 
6 



GOING AHEAD" 



fact remains that had Theodore Roosevelt, at 
any stage, been discouraged by a rebuff, he 
would never have reached his journey's end. 
It was by plunging ahead after every stumble, 
refusing to halt even long enough to count the 
stones in his path, and doing the best he could 
wherever he happened to be, that he gave op- 
portunity its perfect play and lent himself to 
fortune. This is the epic value of his course 
through life. Its more commonplace interpre- 
tation was unconsciously stated by him in his 
testimony before the Commission to Investigate 
the Conduct of the War with Spain. He 
had been describing an incident which ended 
in his finding himself suddenly alone in the 
midst of a forward movement, with nobody 
from whom to take orders. At this point 
he paused. 

"Well," said one of his inquisitors, who had 
been following the story with interest, "what 
then?" 

"Why," answered the witness, "I have al- 
ways found it a good rule, when in doubt what 
to do, to go ahead. I went ahead." 

Within a few weeks we have witnessed an 
incident illustrative of this trait of directness in 
the President. I refer to the Panama episode. 

7 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



It is not in my province to discuss this affair 
on either its moral or its legal side. Its only 
usefulness here is for the example it affords of 
the operation of a certain mental characteristic 
which has played a dominant part in shaping 
Mr. Roosevelt's career. 

We may dismiss at the outset the idea that 
the secession of Panama was a surprise to the 
rest of the world. For years the tie between 
this state and the main body of the republic 
of Colombia had been drawn so tense as to be 
liable to snap at any moment. The failure of 
the canal negotiations between Washington and 
Bogota was simply the last straw thrown upon 
an already perilous burden of discontent. Any 
one could have forecast the result, though with- 
out being able to fix the precise date for the 
revolution. As long ago as the signing of the 
Hay-Herran treaty it was so well understood 
that either Colombia must ratify that instru- 
ment or Panama would take the canal business 
into her own hands, that the diplomatists in 
Washington even discussed the impracticability 
of the Bogota Government's sending reenforce- 
ments overland to its army on the isthmus. 
President Marroquin knew what the alternative 
was; so did Minister Herran. That is the 

8 



THE ISTHMIAN IMBROGLIO 

reason both worked so hard to push the treaty 
through. 

When their efforts failed the expected hap- 
pened. Panama set up in business for herself. 
Nobody in the administration at Washington 
made any pretense of regretting this turn of 
affairs. There were no hypocritical tears, no 
perfunctory messages of condolence. On the 
contrary, the President lost no time in recog- 
nizing the new republic, which in its turn lost 
no time in entering upon treaty negotiations 
with the United States. Perhaps, as his critics 
assert, he showed indecent haste in warming 
over the funeral-baked meats to furnish forth 
the marriage tables. Be that as it may, what 
he did he did without concealment, without 
hesitancy, without quibbling, without apology. 
There was no secret plotting, no clandestine 
correspondence for his enemies to bring to light 
later. He was as little concerned in the revo- 
lution as disconcerted by it. As President he 
had always refused to discuss the likelihood of 
its occurrence; as a man, in the freedom of in- 
tercourse with his personal friends, he had never 
ignored the possibility that it would come. 
Every act of his in other emergencies had made 
it plain in advance how he would act in this one. 

9 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

"If the Colombian Government had held its 
own on the isthmus," said a member of the ad- 
ministration to me after the overturn, "and the 
revolutionists had made the disorder, that dis- 
order would have been suppressed forcibly and 
at once by the United States. As the Colombian 
army disintegrated, however, and the part that 
remained loyal to the Bogota Government em- 
barked for home without so much as an ex- 
change of shots, one of four courses lay open to 
the President. He might have done nothing, 
let events drift till our Congress had convened 
in special session, and then referred the whole 
subject to that body in a message; that would 
have satisfied the demands of decorum, but it 
would also have shifted responsibility from his 
shoulders to others. He might have put down 
the rebellion and restored to Colombia the 
authority her representatives had tamely sur- 
rendered; that course would have fulfilled the 
letter of the guaranty in the treaty of 1846, but 
would have been open to the same line of attack 
as the retention of the Philippines — the main- 
tenance by force of a government without the 
consent of the governed. He might have taken 
our war-ships out of isthmian waters, and left 
the Bogota Government to send in its troops by 

10 



THE EXPECTED THAT HAPPENED 

sea and handle the rebellion as best it could; but 
that would have been the signal for a riot of 
bloodshed, the interruption of a transit as well 
guaranteed as the sovereignty of Colombia, and 
an added complication from French interven- 
tion. Finally, he might have recognized any 
government that was for the time in peaceable 
possession of the isthmus and in a position to 
transact business; and this is precisely what he 
did." 

It was, according to this statement, the only 
direct course that offered, and the President 
followed it. There were no precedents, so he 
established one. Whether his conclusion was 
sober or ill digested may be open to dis- 
pute between honest men and patriots; it 
was at least absolutely characteristic. Any- 
body who knows the President must have 
foreseen just what would happen under such 
conditions as confronted him. Equally, no 
one who knows him need be told that he 
would not have lifted one of his fingers to 
bring the situation about. The end always 
in view was a canal through the isthmus; the 
revolution placed a fresh instrumentality next 
his hand, and he laid hold of it;Where most 
others would have halted for caution's sake, he 

n 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



"went ahead." Posterity will be able to study 
this episode in the light of its remoter results. 
But, in any event, the President's directness 
and candor leave no mysteries for the his- 
torian to uncover, and when his own genera- 
tion passes judgment on his conduct for good 
or ill it will do so with the full knowledge of 
the facts. 

Last summer a rumor reached this country 
that Mr. Magelssen, the vice-consul of the 
United States at Beirut, Syria, had been assas- 
sinated. Without waiting for particulars, which 
are proverbially long in coming when any- 
thing happens in the Turkish dominions, Presi- 
dent Roosevelt ordered a squadron of Ameri- 
can war-ships to the scene of the supposed crime. 
The suddenness of this move astonished every 
one. Representatives of European powers had 
been assaulted and murdered without so quick 
action on the part of the governments concerned. 
Abroad, the President's course was set down to 
his impulsiveness; at home, to his jingoism. 
The friends of peace were alarmed lest it should 
bring on war. Others condemned it as a bluster 
which he would not attempt with a strong 
power, but which he felt he could safely try 
on poor, broken-down Turkey. 

12 



WARNING TO TURKEY 



No war followed. Fortunately, the original 
rumor was found to be almost groundless, so 
there would have been no cause for active hos- 
tilities. It is true, moreover, that the same tac- 
tics would not have been tried with England 
or France or Germany. But why? Because 
we could have got from either of those coun- 
tries in three days' time fuller details of the 
incident than we could get in three months 
from Turkey. England or France or Ger- 
many, if found in the wrong, would have apolo- 
gized at once and offered such other and more 
substantial reparation as the occasion seemed to 
call for. Turkey would have postponed as long 
as possible the investigation of the affair, and 
then the apology; and, when it came to money 
damages, she would have tried to make promises 
pass for piastres. We should have haggled and 
worried over this debt for five or six years, 
served a series of quasi-ultimata upon the Sul- 
tan, scaled down the principal a little when he 
drew a poor mouth, consented to waive interest 
charges in consideration of prompt settlement 
of the remainder, and finally received — as 
nearly nothing as he could squeeze or coddle 
us into accepting. Here was where the Presi- 
dent's directness came into play again. He 

l 3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



knew that with such a debtor the creditor who 
acts quickly acts twice. The Turk was doubt- 
less as much surprised as any of the disinter- 
ested outsiders when he discovered that the 
United States Government was not deliberating 
what to do, but had already done it — that its 
war-ships were where they could begin business 
without a moment's delay if a needless hitch 
occurred in the diplomatic correspondence. 

Granted that no other government has acted 
with such startling suddenness in a similar case; 
it is also true that no other government could 
have done so. The Sultan knew, and all the 
rest of mankind knew, that the errand of that 
squadron was precisely what it purported to 
be — to support the American minister in his 
demand for immediate satisfaction for the mur- 
der of the vice-consul, if it had occurred as 
reported; that behind this lay no ulterior pur- 
pose on the part of the United States to find 
an excuse for a war or the seizure of Turkish 
territory. The motives of any other strong 
power would have been under suspicion. Pos- 
sibly the order of the war-ships to Beirut was 
a hasty step ; of that, every critic must be his own 
judge. The best test of its wisdom, however, 
will be the comparative security of foreign lives 



A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS 

and property in Turkey for the rest of the pres- 
ent administration. 

President Roosevelt is not a genius. He is 
a man of no extraordinary natural capacity. As 
author, lawmaker, administrator, huntsman, 
athlete, soldier, what you will, his record con- 
tains nothing that might not have been accom- 
plished by any man of sound physique and good 
intelligence. Such prestige as he enjoys above 
his fellows he has acquired partly by hard work 
and partly by using his mother-wit in his choice 
of tasks and his method of tackling them. He 
has simply taken up and completed what others 
have dropped in discouragement, sought better 
ways of doing what others have done before, 
labored always in the open, and remembered 
that the world moves. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 

Republican crisis of 1884 — First break with the Independents — 
A party man still — Running for Governor — Why a program 
failed — Second break with the Independents — A hitherto un- 
published letter. 

In the summer of 1884 a man not yet twenty- 
six years old was faced with a problem the 
solution of which might affect the whole cur- 
rent of his life. Though still a mere youth, he 
had acquired a reputation as wide as the coun- 
try by his record as a reform legislator in his 
native State, New York. He had risen to the 
leadership of the Republican side in the Assem- 
bly at Albany. His ability, his pluck, and, 
above all, his honest independence, had not only 
fixed the eyes of his fellow countrymen upon 
him, but forced his recognition by the party 
managers, so that he had been sent to the Repub- 
lican national convention at Chicago as the 
head of the State delegation to take his first 
active part in the task of President-making. In 

16 



PARTING OF THE WAYS 

the convention he had fought hard for his can- 
didate, George F. Edmunds, then regarded as 
the special champion of the independent ele- 
ment in Republican politics, and had been 
defeated; James G. Blaine, the candidate against 
whom the whole weight of the reformers had 
been hurled, had been nominated. Not a few 
of Mr. Blaine's other opponents had declared 
in advance that in no event would they support 
him for President — they would sooner go out 
of their party. The convention had accepted 
their challenge; the crucial hour had come, and 
they must now retreat or make good their 
threats. Already the press was bulging with 
manifestoes and open letters and interviews, put 
forth by lifelong Republicans who were aban- 
doning the ticket to its fate. 

The young man was Theodore Roosevelt, 
and he was at the parting of the ways. On 
one side he saw George William Curtis, Carl 
Schurz — in short, nearly all the prominent 
men on whose support he had most steadfastly 
counted — taking the road that led toward the 
Democratic party, at least for the time. Be- 
hind him lay the fruits of two years' work in 
the New York Legislature — hard work, sincere 
work, which had told its story for good gov- 

17 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ernment. It had been done not by the sole 
power of his own speech and vote, but by the 
combinations he had been able to form with 
others who thought and felt as he did, or who, 
lacking both logic and sentiment, were ready 
to follow him for discipline's sake or motives 
of expediency. Although individual initiative, 
direction, force, were essential to such under- 
takings, and the successful combination was 
after all only a group of individual factors, yet 
he realized that his personal efforts could not 
have accomplished anything of themselves. 
Should he now turn his back upon the past, step 
out of the ranks of the political army in which 
he had been trained, and become an unattached 
sharpshooter? He could not go over to the 
enemy; in principles and spirit they had prac- 
tically nothing in common; there was no bond 
of sympathy between them except objection to 
one candidate. 

It was a serious dilemma. Though accus- 
tomed to act on instinct in most emergencies, 
he hesitated just a little in the presence of this 
one. There were Republican dogmas which 
he had not yet digested. One of these which 
would probably figure largely in the campaign 
was the dogma of high protection, while his 

18 



WEIGHING THE REASONS 

Harvard schooling had been all in the direc- 
tion of free trade. He was fully conscious that 
an administration brought into power by Re- 
publican votes had carried the Union safely 
through the civil war, and molded a group of 
sovereign States into a solid unit, yet he was 
far from accepting the extreme views of a large 
element in the Republican party as to the con- 
tinued penance which should be demanded of 
the South for the sin of secession. Neverthe- 
less, the general tendencies of the party, its 
national aspirations, its disposition to test new 
measures in statecraft instead of rejecting them 
because they were new, appealed strongly to 
him on both his temperamental and his practi- 
cal sides. It was the only party in which he 
felt at home, and with which, in spite of some 
differences in detail, he could work out his 
projects for the public advantage. 

Should he go out of the party and stay till 
the present storm had blown over, and then 
come back again? A good many men could 
have figured out such a program and deliber- 
ately entered upon it; with him it would have 
been impossible. The only question he had 
to decide was: Stay in, or stay out? He had 
pledged himself to no course; he had raised not 

19 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



a hand, uttered not a word, to prevent any of 
his colleagues from following their own con- 
sciences. When an old friend and fellow Re- 
publican said, "I can not remain in the party 
and vote for Blaine; if the Democrats nom- 
inate such a man as Grover Cleveland I must 
vote for him," Mr. Roosevelt, he tells me, not 
only made no effort to restrain him, but an- 
swered: "Cleveland would be the best man the 
Democrats could name; still, if I felt as you 
do, I should support any proper Democratic 
nomination." All this was apart from the ques- 
tion of what he should ultimately do himself; 
he felt very sure what that would be, but 
he wished to think it over before making an 
irrevocable decision. The agitated atmosphere 
surrounding him was not conducive to calm 
judgment. Away, therefore, he hastened for a 
brief interval of quiet, and on his Dakota ranch 
reviewed the whole situation in his mind; then 
he made an authoritative statement: 

"I intend to vote the Republican presiden- 
tial ticket. A man can not act both without 
and within the party; he can do either, but he 
can not possibly do both. Each course has its 
advantages and each has its disadvantages, and 
one can not take the advantages or the disad- 

20 




THEODOEE EOOSEVELT AT TWENTY-FOUR. 



A REPUBLICAN STILL 



vantages separately. I went in with my eyes 
open to do what I could within the party; I 
did my best and got beaten, and I propose to 
stand by the result. It is impossible to com- 
bine the functions of a guerrilla chief with 
those of a colonel in the regular army; one has 
greater independence of action, the other is able 
to make what action he does take vastly more 
effective. In certain contingencies the one can 
do most good, in certain contingencies the other; 
but there is no use in accepting a commission 
and then trying to play the game out on a lone 
hand. During the entire canvass for the nom- 
ination Mr. Blaine received but two checks. I 
had a hand in both, and I could have had a 
hand in neither had not those Republicans who 
elected me the head of the New York State 
delegation supposed that I would in good faith 
support the man who was fairly made the Re- 
publican nominee. I am by inheritance and 
by education a Republican; whatever good I 
have been able to accomplish in public life has 
been accomplished through the Republican 
party; I have acted with it in the past, and wish 
to act with it in the future." 

After his summer's recreation he was called 
upon for a few speeches. He had little to say, 

21 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



and nothing that was not kindly in purport, of 
his former associates who had parted company 
with him at Chicago, but one of his utterances 
should be quoted as throwing further light upon 
his attitude: "It has always been my luck in 
politics, and I suppose always will be, to offend 
some wing of the party — generally the machine, 
but sometimes the independents. I should 
think little of myself should I permit the inde- 
pendents to dictate to me any more than the 
machine." 

On his return from Cuba, after the Spanish 
War, a second crisis occurred in the career of 
Mr. Roosevelt. Politics in New York were in 
a state of upheaval. It was plain that Governor 
Black's administration would be followed by a 
Democratic sweep at the polls unless the Re- 
publicans could find a candidate so popular on 
his own account as to pull the whole ticket 
through. There must be a stirring campaign, 
with plenty of cannon, cheers, flag-waving and 
red fire, but above all there must be some one 
to shout for. Apathetic quiet, or even half- 
hearted noise, meant sure defeat. This was a 
contingency too serious to be calmly contem- 
plated, for the party was split, and was only 
holding itself together by main force to con- 

22 



ANOTHER PARTY CRISIS 

ceal the rift from the public. Defeat at this 
juncture would compel the abdication of the 
old management and assure the installation of 
a new one, which had been waiting for some 
time for such a chance. There was a general 
settlement of the shrewder party lieutenants 
upon Roosevelt as their man, and they made 
no secret of it. Piatt, Roosevelt's opposite pole 
in sentiment and methods, agreed with the lieu- 
tenants, but was too old a campaigner to adver- 
tise his opinion prematurely. On the other 
hand, the fact that this was a critical year for 
the Republicans had stimulated the independ- 
ents to put up a candidate. If they could nom- 
inate an ideal man — one of the right character 
as well as the right running qualities — they 
could drive Piatt out of business as a boss, and 
this was the end toward which they had been 
working as long as most of them had been in- 
terested in politics at all. Roosevelt seemed to 
be the very man they were seeking. With him 
as a candidate, backed by evidence of a large 
uprising of independent voters in his support 
throughout the State, they reasoned that the 
Piatt machine would be forced into accepting 
him also as the Republican candidate, without 
pledges of any sort such as candidates are ex- 

23 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



pected to give to the parties who nominate 
them; that the Republican indorsement of an 
independent candidate for Governor would 
leave the rest of the Republican ticket with no 
support except the strict party vote; that, under 
these conditions, some or all of the machine 
nominees would be defeated by the Democrats, 
to the further demoralization of the machine; 
and that as Governor Mr. Roosevelt would have 
an unhampered initiative and a fine oppor- 
tunity to break up certain abuses immemori- 
ally entrenched in the State government at 
Albany. 

Accounts differ as to what took place at the 
secret negotiations that followed. The inde- 
pendent leaders asserted, in an address made 
public on September 25, 1898, that Roosevelt 
gave his approval to their plan, with the one 
stipulation that if it "should so far fail that he 
should not receive the Republican nomination, 
he must then be free to accept or decline the 
independent nomination"; that later he con- 
ferred with them about the technical prelim- 
inaries to launching their ticket; but that on 
September 20 they received word, from him 
that he found himself in an "impossible posi- 
tion" with respect to their nomination and this 

24 



BREAK WITH INDEPENDENTS 

was followed by a letter under date of Septem- 
ber 22 cutting off further relations with their 
project. 

Mr. Roosevelt's version of the chain of con- 
ditions leading up to this end was never given, 
I believe, in any newspaper interview or other 
authorized statement, but was freely quoted 
among his friends at the time. It was to the 
general effect that, although he had consented 
under certain contingencies to their use of his 
name, the independents themselves had insisted 
that he was not to give, and could not give, his 
acceptance of their nomination till it should be 
formally offered to him; that he did not under- 
stand, when the subject was first broached to 
him, that such consent would involve his deser- 
tion of the fortunes of any candidates who might 
be associated with him on the Republican State 
ticket; that a controversy having arisen as to 
something which the independent platform 
should contain, the independent managers sent 
him a written version of their original interview 
with him, marking in the margin a single pass- 
age that covered the point at issue; that in his 
acknowledgment of receipt he indorsed this 
marked passage as containing a correct state- 
ment of the facts, but that his indorsement was 

25 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



construed by his correspondents as extending to 
everything in the enclosure ; and that when, in 
the light of later utterances by the independ- 
ents, he grasped their plan in all its bearings, 
he did not feel that he could afford to be placed 
in a false position before his party and the 
voters of the State, and made haste to notify 
the managers accordingly. His letter of Sep- 
tember 22, already mentioned, put the gist of 
the matter thus: 

"The independent nomination has not been 
formally offered me, but I am now receiving 
so many questions as to my intentions in the 
matter that I am not willing to wait longer. 

"My name will probably be presented to 
the Republican State Convention at Saratoga 
on the 27th. If I am nominated, then it will 
be on the same ticket with those who are named 
for the other State offices. The Republican 
party will also have congressional and legisla- 
tive tickets in the field. National issues are 
paramount this year; very few municipal offi- 
cers are to be elected. The candidates will be 
my associates in the general effort to elect a 
Republican Governor, Republican Congress- 
men to support President McKinley and the 
cause of sound money, and a Legislature which 

26 



CHANGING CANDIDATES 

will send to the Senate a Republican United 
States Senator. 

"It seems to me that I would not be acting 
in good faith toward my fellow candidates if 
I permitted my name to head a ticket designed 
for their overthrow; a ticket, moreover, which 
can not be put up because of objections to the 
character or fitness of any candidates, inasmuch 
as no candidates have yet been nominated. 

"I write this with great reluctance, for I wish 
the support of every independent. If elected 
Governor, I would strive to serve the State as a 
whole, and to serve my party by helping to 
serve the State. I should greatly like the aid 
of the independents, and I appreciate the im- 
portance of the independent vote, but I can 
not accept a nomination on terms that would 
make me feel disloyal to the principles for which 
I stand, or at the cost of acting with what seems 
to me bad faith toward my associates." 

Although two or three conferences with the 
leaders of the independent movement had pre- 
ceded the delivery of this letter, they had failed 
of any results in the direction of conciliation, 
and the independents went on and put a sepa- 
rate ticket in the field containing the name of 
Theodore Bacon, of Rochester, a lawyer of 

27 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



note, for Governor. Some embarrassment and 
delay were occasioned by the fact that the ar- 
rangement for nominating Roosevelt had been 
by a form prescribed in the statutes for certain 
cases — a petition to the Secretary of State with 
a given number of signatures attached. The 
independents' petition, circulated all over the 
State, had been signed by 8,000 persons — a great 
many more than required by law. But these 
signatures were for an independent nomination 
of Roosevelt, not Bacon, and it took some time 
and trouble to provide for the substitution. 
The Republican Convention, meanwhile, had 
carried out its purpose of nominating Roose- 
velt; there was nothing else for it to do. It 
had done so, moreover, without exacting a sin- 
gle pledge from him, and this was all that the 
independents had aimed at. When the votes 
were counted on election night, Roosevelt was 
found with a plurality of 17,786 to his credit. 
It was not a very big plurality for New York 
with her 1,500,000 voters, but, like Mercutio's 
wound, 'twould serve. 

The interesting feature of the count was that 
it showed Roosevelt to have run several thou- 
sand votes ahead of his ticket. Bacon's total 
was about 2,100. This number presumptively 

28 



AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER 

measured the strength of the independent move- 
ment for independence's sole sake. The other 
6,000 signers of the independent petition had 
probably been attracted to it by the hope it of- 
fered of a chance to vote for Roosevelt whether 
the Republicans should nominate him or not; 
there is always a contingent of these whether-or- 
noes in the following of every party leader. 
When he accepted the Republican nomination 
and declined the independent, they went with 
him and swelled his plurality. They would 
have stuck to him just the same if he had sud- 
denly blossomed out as a Prohibitionist or a 
Labor candidate. It was the man, not the poli- 
tician, they were supporting. 

Right here I am going to trench on half- 
forbidden ground far enough to add my own 
particular mite to the literature of this inci- 
dent. On September 3, 1898, Mr. Roosevelt 
wrote me from Montauk, Long Island, where 
the Rough Riders were in camp, about sundry 
matters in which we felt a joint interest. His 
letter bore evidences of hasty composition and 
bristled with interlineations, which are indi- 
cated in the copy here given. Referring to 
some comments of mine on the talk of making 
him Governor, he said: 

29 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



I haven't bothered myself a particle about the nomi- 
nation, and have no idea whether it will be made or not. 
In the first place, I would rather have led this regiment 
than be Governor of New York three times over. In the 
next place, while on the whole I should like the office of 
Governor and would not shirk it, the position will be one 
of such extreme difficulty, and I shall have to offend so 
many good friends of mine, that I should breathe a sigh of 
relief were it not offered to me. 

It is a party position. I should be one of the big 
party leaders if I should take it. This means that I should 

with 

have to treat A and work with the organization, and I 
should see and consult the leaders — not once, but continu- 

earnestly on a ^ important questions 

ously — and A try to come to an agreement A with them ; 
and of course the mere fact of my doing so would alienate 
many of my friends whose friendship I value. On the 
other hand, when - we come to a matter like the Canal, or 
Life Insurance, or anything touching the Eighth Com- 
mandment and general decency, I could not allow any 
consideration of party to come in. And this would alienate those 

who, if not friends, were supporters. 

As for taking the honor without conditions or not at 
all, I do not believe anybody would so much as propose to 
mention conditions to me. Certainly I would not enter- 
tain any conditions save those outlined in this very letter — 
that, while a good party man who would honestly strive to 

to work with them, 

keep in with the leaders of the party organization, A and to 
bring the Republican party into a better shape for two 

yet 

years hence, but in the last resort I should have to be my 
A 

30 



VALUE AS PROOF 



own master, and when a question of honesty or dishonesty 

have to 

arose I should A pay no further heed to party lines. 

Now, as I say, I haven't an idea about the nomina- 
tion. I know that certain of the politicians — some for 

or wholly bad 

good and doubtless some for less good A reasons — are work- 
some I am glad 
ing for me, and that there are A (I may add, A to say, the 

worst) seme who are working against me. I should say 
that the odds are against my nomination ; but I can also 
say, with all sincerity, that I don't care in the least. 

When the date of this letter is noted in con- 
nection with its contents, and when we read 
it literally between the lines, using the auto- 
graphic amendments as an index to the work- 
ing of the writer's mind, its importance will 
appear. For it was written spontaneously in 
the confidence of friendship, at a time when 
nothing was further from the thought of either 
its author or its recipient than that it would 
ever be valuable as a means of refuting unjust 
insinuations. 



3i 



CHAPTER III 

KNIGHT ERRANT OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM 

How Mr. Roosevelt became Commissioner — Publicity for the 
merit system — Bringing up the Southern quotas — Tilts with 
Congress — Competitive examinations and the police. 

MR. Roosevelt's decision to remain a Re- 
publican after Blaine's nomination for the presi- 
dency brought about, as we have seen, a tem- 
porary estrangement between him and a num- 
ber of well-known men with whom he had 
worked in the past for civil-service reform. 
They lost no opportunity of making plain to 
the public the fact of the separation, and of 
the critical distance at which they should 
thenceforward scrutinize his conduct in public 
affairs. An insincere man might have seized 
such a state of armed truce as an excuse for 
dropping aggressive tactics in the reform propa- 
ganda, and leaving his old associates to carry 
this on alone as best they could; but, so far 
from that, he became a more determined fighter 
than ever, and took especial pains to show his 

32 



CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER 

contempt for party lines when it came to ad- 
ministering the purely business branches of the 
governmental machine. 

His appointment in 1889 as Civil-Service 
Commissioner, though fraught with conse- 
quences of such importance to his future, was 
more a happy accident than anything else. 
When the Harrison administration began he 
was taking great interest in foreign affairs, 
and aspired to be Assistant Secretary of State. 
Secretary Blaine, however, had recognized in 
him a certain impatience of restraint which 
boded danger for their relations as chief and 
subordinate. So the assistant secretaryship was 
given to William F. Wharton of Massachu- 
setts, a more discreet young man, and to Mr. 
Roosevelt was tendered instead a position on 
the Civil-Service Commission. Many of his 
friends were surprised at his acceptance of the 
place, which seemed too narrow for his powers. 
Up to that time the commission had been re- 
garded as a rather insignificant wheel in the 
administrative machine. Dorman B. Eaton 
of New York, its president, was the only man 
of national reputation who had had any con- 
nection with it during the six years of its his- 
tory, and his interest was wholly patriotic and 

33 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



philanthropic. He had devoted several years 
unselfishly to the study of the European sys- 
tems and the siege of Congress, and deserved 
almost the sole credit for finally procuring the 
enactment of the organic legislation. Mr. 
Roosevelt, who had been his enthusiastic col- 
league in the National Civil-Service Reform 
League, was the author of the bill which passed 
the Legislature of New York during Governor 
Cleveland's administration, about simultane- 
ously with the Federal act. 

Mr. Eaton, a man of cautious temperament, 
had endeavored to efface himself while he re- 
mained in office. He kept out of the way of 
the newspapers, and averted as far as possible 
all unnecessary publicity as to the acts of the 
commission. He felt that the merit system was 
still novel in the United States, while the old 
spoils interests were so well entrenched that 
every paragraph of news or comment in the press 
was more liable to damage the reform by stimu- 
lating its foes to fresh endeavor than to help 
it by encouraging its friends. It was natural, 
therefore, for many superficial observers to 
assume that the policy of secretiveness would 
continue indefinitely, and that any prominent 
man who could be induced to take a place on 

34 



PUBLICITY FOR MERIT SYSTEM 

the commission would practically disappear 
from public view for the period of his service. 

Whoever expected Mr. Roosevelt to remain 
long hidden in any position, however insignifi- 
cant, did not know the man. He had grown 
up in the sunlight and fresh air. Publicity 
had no terrors for him. He had always spoken 
his mind when and where he pleased. He 
gloried in a fight for any cause he had espoused, 
and his theory was that anything worth having 
was not too dear at the price of a few hard 
knocks — provided always that he were in a 
situation to give back all he took, with interest. 

Hence it came about that on Mr. Roose- 
velt's entrance into it the Civil-Service Com- 
mission, for the first time since its foundation, 
threw open its office doors freely to all comers. 
This policy disarmed a part of the criticism 
which had formerly been rife, founded on the 
theory that there was some mystery connected 
with its workings. No member of Congress 
thereafter ventured a mistaken comment on the 
merit system, without receiving by the next mail 
a cordial invitation to come down to headquar- 
ters and explore the whole business to his heart's 
content. No editorial mention of the commis- 
sion or its work passed unheeded if it found its 

3B 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



way to headquarters, and where the writer ap- 
peared to have been honestly misled on any 
point he was promptly set right. The news- 
paper correspondents in Washington were 
made welcome, and furnished with any in- 
formation that could properly be given out. 
An effort was made to establish more than 
purely formal relations between the heads of 
departments and the commissioners, and to con- 
vince the former that the spirit of the commis- 
sion was cooperative rather than antipathetic. 
All the resources of Mr. Roosevelt's agile wit 
were taxed not only to meet new difficulties as 
they arose, but to devise means for extending 
the scope of the commission's usefulness and 
win popular confidence in the democratic and 
American character of the merit system. 

One day a paragraph appeared somewhere 
in the press which showed that there still lin- 
gered in the public mind a notion that only 
Republicans need try to enter the Government 
service during a Republican administration. 
Like a flash came Mr. Roosevelt's response. 
He sent out invitations to all the representa- 
tives of Southern newspapers in Washington to 
meet him at his office on a certain afternoon. 

"Now, gentlemen," said he, "I am going 
36 



BRINGING UP SOUTHERN QUOTAS 

to ask you to help me dispel this illusion, and 
at the same time aid your own people. I have 
been looking over the list of appointments from 
our registers, and, whereas the Northern and 
Western States have their quotas full and some 
of them overflowing, the South is short of its 
share. I wish each of you would publish in 
the most emphatic manner the statement that 
it is my desire that the young men of the South 
should come forward, irrespective of politics, 
and take our examinations. I assume, on gen- 
eral principles, that most of your educated 
young men are Democrats; but you may give 
them my absolute guaranty that they will re- 
ceive the same consideration in every respect 
as the young men in other parts of the country, 
that no one will inquire what their politics are, 
and that they will be appointed according to 
their deserts and in the regular order of ap- 
portionment. This is an institution not for Re- 
publicans, and not for Democrats, but for the 
whole American people. It belongs to them, 
and will be administered, as long as I stay here, 
in their interest without discrimination." 

The effect was magical. The examinations 
on the Southern routes began to swarm with 
bright young fellows, to whom, by the then 

37 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



modest standards of the South, a salary of $1,200 
was riches. 

In spite of every effort, there were many 
members of Congress who refused either to take 
for granted that the system was good and hon- 
estly handled or to come and see for themselves. 
These stubborn gentry, and a few others who 
wanted to carry water on both shoulders, would 
regularly, once a session, go through a stereo- 
typed comedy in passing the civil-service appro- 
priation. The great budget bills are consid- 
ered, in the House of Representatives, first in 
committee of the whole, and then reported to 
the House and passed. In committee of the 
whole a vote is subject to a division and a count 
of heads, but the roll is never called. So, when 
the civil-service appropriation would come up, 
there would always be a division, and a majority 
would appear in favor of striking out the en- 
tire grant and thereby starving the commission 
to death; but when the bill was reported to the 
House the friends of the merit system would 
demand a roll-call, and then a score or two of 
the very members who had helped to make a 
majority against the appropriation in committee 
would scuttle for the other side and have their 
names recorded as voting in its favor. Their 

38 



TILTS WITH CONGRESS 



first demonstration would usually be made to 
pique Mr. Roosevelt, who had once occupied 
a seat in the gallery when the committee debate 
was in progress; their second would be for the 
benefit of those of their constituents who were 
educated and intelligent enough to read the 
Congressional Record and the newspapers. 

Once the opponents of the merit system in 
Congress carried their horse-play a little too 
far, and, though not striking out the total grant, 
refused to give the commission all the money 
it needed for the expense of conducting exam- 
inations. A meek man would have bowed to 
this snub. Not so Mr. Roosevelt. He sent for 
the schedule of examination routes as laid out, 
and prepared a revised version, chopping off 
with one blow the districts represented by the 
men who had refused to vote the necessary 
money. He then informed the leading news- 
paper correspondents of what had been done, 
so as to have it well advertised. He coupled 
with the news an explanation that, as long as 
the list must be cut down to keep it within the 
amount appropriated for expenses, and some 
districts had to be sacrificed, it was only com- 
mon justice that those members who had voted 
against the necessary grant should be given the 

39 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



full benefit of the restriction they had them- 
selves imposed. There was loud chatter about 
"impeachment" and "removal," and what-not, 
when this news reached the ears of the victims, 
but the bold stroke carried the day, and the 
commission got its money after that. 

When a member of either chamber per- 
sisted in criticizing the commission unfairly 
after an invitation to inspect its methods and 
satisfy himself, he was apt to hear from Mr. 
Roosevelt in another way; and it made no 
difference what the offender's party affiliations 
or personal importance might be. Mr. Gor- 
man, of Maryland, attacking the merit system 
one day in the Senate, told a story of "a bright 
young man in the city of Baltimore, an appli- 
cant for the position of letter-carrier," who was 
required on his examination to tell "the most 
direct route from Baltimore to Japan," and on 
his failure to answer this and some other equally 
unpractical questions was rejected. On the day 
the speech was published Mr. Roosevelt sent 
the Senator a polite written request for the date 
and place of the examination, and also an in- 
vitation to inspect all the examination papers 
for letter-carriers and find the obnoxious ques- 
tion if it had ever been asked. In this instance, 

40 



AN ARCADIAN SENATOR 

Mr. Gorman explained afterward to his col- 
leagues in the Senate, "I did what I do in the 
case of all interferences by impudent people 
who without warrant ask me about the dis- 
charge of my duty: I took no notice of it." 
That brought out from Mr. Roosevelt a public 
letter, closing in this characteristic style: 

"High-minded, sensitive Mr. Gorman! 
Clinging, trustful Mr. Gorman! Nothing 
could shake his belief in that 'bright young 
man.' Apparently, he did not even yet try to 
find out his name — if he had a name; in fact, 
his name, like everything else about him, re- 
mains to this day wrapped in the Stygian mantle 
of an abysmal mystery. Still less has Mr. Gor- 
man tried to verify the statements made to him. 
It is enough for him that they were made. No 
harsh suspicion, no stern demand for evidence 
or proof, appeals to his artless and unspoiled 
soul. He believes whatever he is told, even 
when he has forgotten the name of the teller, or 
never knew it. It would indeed be difficult to 
find an instance of a more abiding confidence 
in human nature — even in anonymous human 
nature. And this is the end of the tale of 
Arcadian Mr. Gorman and his elusive friend, 
the bright young man without a name!" 

4 1 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



James S. Clarkson, the present surveyor of 
the Port of New York, was formerly an Assist- 
ant Postmaster-General, having for one of his 
duties the appointment and dismissal of fourth- 
class postmasters. As joint members of the ad- 
ministration under President Harrison, he and 
Mr. Roosevelt had several clashes while this 
connection lasted, having been trained in di- 
verse schools of ethics as regarded the civil 
service. Mr. Clarkson, when he had retired 
from office, contributed an article to the North 
American Review charging the commission 
with being more unfriendly to the Republican 
party under Harrison than it had been under 
Cleveland, denouncing the mugwumps as being 
insincere and merely Democrats in disguise, 
and insisting on the right of the Republicans 
when in power to fill the offices with persons 
of their own political faith. Mr. Roosevelt, in 
a speech delivered at St. Louis soon after the 
article appeared, met these complaints in a 
fashion all his own. 

"Mr. Clarkson," said he, "is suffering un- 
der a confusion of ideas. He is mixing him- 
self and his friends with the Republican party. 
The Civil-Service Commission is most un- 
doubtedly hostile to Mr. Clarkson and the idea 

42 



REBUKING A SPOILSMAN 

which Mr. Clarkson represents. We should 
fail in our duty if we were not. We can no 
more retain the good-will of the spoilsmen than 
a policeman who does his duty can retain the 
good-will of the lawbreaker. 

"Mr. Clarkson says that the Democratic 
party purchased the mugwump edifice. I do 
not believe Mr. Clarkson means that. It is 
just as foolish to make that statement as it would 
be to make the statement that the Democratic 
party purchased Mr. Clarkson to write his 
article, which is more fitted to do damage to 
the Republican party than any possible mug- 
wump editorial. 

"He represents civil-service reformers as 
saying that office-holding does not concern the 
people. On the contrary, we say that it does 
concern the people, and we take issue with Mr. 
Clarkson and his friends, who insist that it 
merely concerns the one small and not very 
clean caste of office-seekers and office-holders. 

"He says that he and his friends believe in 
Republican officers under Republican admin- 
istrations. If this is not right, he says, then 
all political parties in America ought to dis- 
band. In other words, he and his friends be- 
lieve that if they can not get the offices the party 

43 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ought to disband. That is to say, he and his 
friends believe that they ought to be paid for 
supporting the party. That sounds like a harsh 
way of putting it, but it is a perfectly just way. 
There is a certain difference between being paid 
with an office and being paid with money, ex- 
actly as there is a certain difference between the 
savagery of an Ashantee and that of a Hotten- 
tot, but it is small in amount." 

Mr. Roosevelt's belief in the reformed civil- 
service system was never the blind faith of a 
faddist, but always tempered with practical 
sense. Those of us who were watching his 
career as Police Commissioner recall very dis- 
tinctly the groan that went up from many life- 
long civil-service reformers when the news- 
papers revealed the fact that he had taken his 
stand against a general competitive examina- 
tion for promotion on the police force, and 
had caused a split in the board by his unex- 
pected course. One of his colleagues drew his 
attention to the law, which provided that pro- 
motions must be made through considerations 
of seniority, merit, and competitive examina- 
tion. Mr. Roosevelt did not dispute this; but 
he defied his critic to show him anything in 
the law which threw the examinations open to 

44 



A COMMON-SENSE VIEW 

everybody, or forbade the board to pick out 
the men they wished to enter the competition. 
It took some time to settle that question, but 
when it was settled Mr. Roosevelt had carried 
his point. 

The commissioner's critics, of course, seized 
upon this as an evidence that he had gone over 
to the enemy, and become a believer in favorit- 
ism on the police force as elsewhere. It was 
a bold position for a man to take when count- 
ing on the support of an element in the com- 
munity who had always insisted upon free 
and open competitive examinations as the one 
magical test of fitness for public office and em- 
ployment. Most of these persons, Mr. Roose- 
velt realized, would misunderstand his attitude, 
but he was sure that if they were capable of 
understanding it they would approve it. He 
was as stanch a believer as ever in unrestricted 
competition in its proper place. But he was 
able to keep in mind what a mere faddist rarely 
or never does, the fact that any civil-service ex- 
amination is at best only a screen to keep out 
the unfit, not a mysterious instrument of selec- 
tion like a divining-rod; that it had been sub- 
stituted for free choice by the appointing officer, 
not because it possessed any sacred virtue of 

45 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



its own, but because it offered the only widely 
available refuge from a reign of political spoils 
and personal favoritism; and that the sole 
reason the reformers had made open competi- 
tion the general rule was to give as democratic 
a character as possible to the merit system. 

In the case of the police force some con- 
siderations seemed worthy of weight, which did 
not apply everywhere else. For an original 
appointment as patrolman rigid examinations 
were conducted and everybody was welcome 
to compete; the larger the number and variety 
of candidates the better pleased was the board. 
But when it came to promoting men who had 
already had an opportunity of showing what 
was in them, the use they had made of their 
opportunity was the first thing to be looked 
into. The primal demand was for courage — 
personal prowess. It goes without saying that 
a policeman might better be without legs to 
chase a ruffian than without the courage to 
tackle him when caught. After the heroes had 
been picked out, the board looked for the sober, 
steady, orderly, and intelligent men whom cir- 
cumstances had never placed in a position to 
try their pluck. Although justice demanded 
that these men should not be forever kept back 

4 6 



DIFFICULTIES OF CHOICE 

by conditions beyond their control, there were 
more misgivings about them than about the men 
who had already proved their quality. Sup- 
pose that a man had been clothed with larger 
responsibilities on the strength of his record 
for sobriety and intelligence, but when sub- 
jected to his first real ordeal he went down be- 
fore it! 

Still, such cases did not present half so 
much difficulty of choice as a mixed class in 
which the physical and moral lines did not run 
parallel. Here and there would be a man 
whose daring and resourcefulness had never 
been challenged in vain, but whose shortcom- 
ings in some other respects were terribly trying. 
Recklessness of discipline, uncertain habits, or 
a past record which, however well retrieved, 
made constant watchfulness advisable, might 
lie in the opposite scale to splendid strength 
and bravery. In such instances the question 
asked was whether the man's shortcomings were 
so serious that he could not be trusted. If so, 
he was ruled out; if not, he was given a fresh 
chance to show his mettle. Then came the 
competitive examination, last of all, to mark 
the order in which the candidates should be 
promoted. 

5 47 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



If competitive examinations of the scholastic 
sort had held the place in the tests for original 
selection or promotion of New York police- 
men that most of the less practical friends of 
the merit system would have assigned them, 
there would have been some amusing but rather 
pitiful results; for the range of accomplish- 
ments in book-learning, and even of knowledge 
of current history and affairs, was not wide 
among the men of brawn and courage. One 
of the tests put to a class of applicants was, 
"Give a brief statement of the life of Abraham 
Lincoln." Ten candidates described the great 
emancipator as the President of the Southern 
Confederacy; one said that he was assassinated 
by Thomas Jefferson, two by Jefferson Davis, 
one by Garfield, three by Guiteau, and one by 
Ballington Booth. 

Another question was, "Who is the chief 
officer of the United States?" One candidate 
answered "Parkhurst," one "Croker," and two 
"Roosevelt." 

A third test, "Name some of the States in 
the Southern Confederacy," brought out a geo- 
graphical conglomerate like "Montana, Idaho, 
Wyoming, Utah, Nevada." Of the answers to 
a request to "Name five of the New England 

4 8 



A TRIAL OF COURAGE 



States," one read, "New York, Albany, Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware"; another, 
"England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and 
Cork"; while still another duplicated this last 
except for substituting Belfast for Cork. 

Yet two of the men who made Lincoln 
President of the Southern Confederacy, getting 
in by a close shave on their other qualifications, 
proved among the best officers on the force. 
Valuable as examinations are as means of weed- 
ing out the hopeless cases, and scrupulously as 
the law requiring them should be guarded 
against violation or neglect, Mr. Roosevelt's 
theory has always been that they are of more 
real importance to the public service in testing 
a candidate's intelligence than in discovering 
his erudition. No scholastic examination — no 
paper test of any sort — would have given his 
proper rank as a subject for promotion to one 
patrolman who was on the force when Mr. 
Roosevelt was Police Commissioner. One 
night, while on his uptown beat, this officer saw 
a man leap out of the window of a house and 
run down the street. He promptly gave chase. 
The man was a burglar, and armed. The 
policeman, however, dashed after him alone, 
and was overtaking him when they came to the 

49 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



New York Central Railroad tunnel. Through 
one of the big openings in the top of the tunnel 
the burglar plunged. It was a long leap, and 
there was danger from the trains underneath, but 
a man whose liberty is at stake will take a heavy 
risk. The patrolman was following close. He 
was inspired by nothing but duty. His liberty 
was not at stake, and he could not have been 
punished or reprimanded for failing to risk his 
neck by jumping into the tunnel. Neverthe- 
less, jump he did. The burglar had the wind 
knocked out of him by the jump. The patrol- 
man, more skilful or lucky in jumping, got off 
scot-free, seized the prisoner, brought him in, 
and thereby earned his promotion. 

The stand taken by so eminent a champion 
of the merit system against the conventional 
tests of fitness, where these tests were themselves 
unfit, naturally startled many good persons. 
Perhaps in the same category we might place 
the shock Mr. Roosevelt gave his more sedate 
associates in the civil-service-reform movement 
when he declared, in 1890, his belief that the 
corps of inspectors of customs on the Texas 
border might very well be recruited from the 
line-riders in the cattle country, by giving a 
large weight to athletic tests. To fill such a 

So 



ATHLETIC TESTS 



position most acceptably a man ought to know 
brands, be a first-rate horseman, and a good 
pistol-shot with both hands. If he were thor- 
oughly qualified in these particulars, knew 
enough of reading, writing, and arithmetic to 
make an intelligible report, and could furnish 
substantial recommendations as to character, 
Mr. Roosevelt thought that he ought to make 
a pretty good inspector. 

The idea, at the time it was first broached, 
was made the subject for not a little censure as 
frivolous and undignified; its author was criti- 
cized for letting his flippant humor run away 
with his sense of his serious obligations as ad- 
viser to the President in setting the competitive 
merit system on its feet; and the newspaper 
paragraphers all over the country took merry 
shies at it. Yet after the lapse of only a few 
years we find an announcement published un- 
der the auspices of the Civil-Service Commis- 
sion in a Southwestern journal, that "an exam- 
ination will be held in Brownsville, Texas, for 
the position of mounted inspector in the cus- 
toms district of Brazos de Santiago, with head- 
quarters at Brownsville. The examination will 
be of a light educational character, but appli- 
cants will be required to file special vouchers 

Si 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



showing their knowledge of the Mexican lan- 
guage and of the country embraced in the dis- 
trict, as well as their ability to read brands and 
their experience in horsemanship and marks- 
manship." 



52 



CHAPTER IV 

A FEW FRIENDS 

Premature alarm of the conservatives — Senator Lodge's relations 
with the President — Other men who have helped — " My 
regiment" — Familiarity and faith — The case of Ben Daniels. 

On the day of President McKinley's death 
I met a number of gentlemen interested in the 
foreign relations of the United States. One 
question was on every lip : "Will not Senator 
Lodge be Secretary of State in President Roose- 
velt's Cabinet?" 

They were evidently much alarmed. Mr. 
Lodge's premiership, they reasoned, would 
mean an aggressive foreign policy, the proba- 
bility of another war before long with either 
Germany or England, and the acquisition of 
additional territory whenever and wherever 
possible by conquest. There was a general 
chorus of surprise when I reassured them by 
saying that Mr. Lodge would not become Sec- 
retary of State. 

"You are perfectly certain of that?" they 

53 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



asked, adding, in a tone of misgiving, "Every 
Cabinet forecast we have seen puts Lodge in 
the first place." 

"You may take comfort from two facts," I 
answered: "first, that Mr. Roosevelt could not 
bully, coax, or drag Mr. Lodge out of the seat 
once filled by Daniel Webster and Charles Sum- 
ner in the United States Senate; and, second, 
that he would not try to. With both parties 
satisfied with the existing arrangement, it is 
hard to find the incentive for change." 

Although from what I knew of both Presi- 
dent and Senator I felt perfectly sure of my 
ground, I was unaware at that moment of a 
telegram sent to the new President by Mr. 
Lodge — the first advice offered by an old friend 
— that he should leave the McKinley program 
undisturbed, but, above all, do nothing which 
could cause the retirement of Secretary Hay. 
My interrogators had simply made the common 
mistake of supposing that personal friendship, 
or a sympathetic view of great questions, would 
be the decisive consideration in Mr. Roose- 
velt's mind when selecting men for office, and 
that the closeness of the tie would be the 
measure of the dignity conferred. As a mat- 
ter of fact, no public man of our time has done 

54 



CLASSIFYING FRIENDSHIPS 

fewer of the things he was expected to do in 
this line, or more of the things which no one 
believed he would do. He has his own gen- 
eral rules covering such matters, but they are 
not the rules most men in his position would 
lay down. I shall not attempt to formulate 
them except in a rough way, but I believe that 
I can convey to the reader at least the skeleton 
of their philosophy. 

At the outset I should divide his friends 
into two classes: those whose claim upon his 
regard has grown out of a natural affinity or 
long and pleasant social contact, and those 
whose place in his heart has been won by serv- 
ice in emergencies. Here and there we might 
find the classes merged in some individual, but 
not often. Perhaps the most notable example 
of such merger is Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge 
was an instructor at Harvard while Roosevelt 
was a student there, and many persons have 
drawn from that fact the inference that their 
friendship began in Cambridge. Strange to 
say, the very reverse is the case. Lodge scarcely 
knew Roosevelt while they were together at the 
university; and Roosevelt, though interested in 
history, shunned Lodge's classes and entertained 
a prejudice against the instructor because Lodge 

55 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



had a severer system of marking than he con- 
sidered fair. It was not till both became inter- 
ested in the Edmunds movement and had occa- 
sion to consult on means for bringing New 
York and Massachusetts together for the sup- 
port of their chosen candidate, that they became 
acquainted. As their preliminary campaign 
advanced they grew friendly, and then intimate. 
At every stage of Roosevelt's career since 
that day Lodge has been at his side to assist in 
procuring for him the object of his ambition. 
When he was Civil-Service Commissioner 
Lodge led the fight yearly in Congress in favor 
of a larger scope for the commission's activities 
and more money to do business with. When the 
spoilsmen would make a raid upon the merit 
system on the floor, Lodge would be there, at 
the head of the defensive force, to receive the 
brunt of the attack. When work had to be done 
in the committees in advance of a contemplated 
onslaught, it was Lodge who undertook the 
diplomatic task. When a bill was so drawn as 
to hide a job of patronage and thereby rob the 
commission of a part of its prerogative, it was 
Lodge who planted himself in the path of the 
measure till it had been revised or withdrawn. 
When Roosevelt wished to be Assistant Secre- 

56 



WHEN JUDGMENTS CLASH 

tary of the Navy, Lodge camped at the White 
House till the President sent his friend's name 
to the Senate. One of the rare occasions where 
Lodge and Roosevelt differed as to what was 
best for the latter's fortunes was at the Repub- 
lican National Convention of 1900. Roosevelt 
was bound not to take the vice-presidency, 
where he was sure he would be "shelved" for 
four years; Lodge insisted that he should take 
it, because there was no such thing as shelving 
a man like him. The sequel justified the Sen- 
ator's judgment, though in a manner neither 
could then foresee. 

On other questions they often differ. The 
President would sacrifice his right arm for the 
Senator, but sacrificing a conviction is another 
matter: his heart may be his friend's, but his 
ideas are his own. "I am going to remove 
M to-morrow," he said to me one day, re- 
ferring to an office-holder of whose misconduct 
he was satisfied, though without irrefutable evi- 
dence. "Cabot has been here all the afternoon 
pleading with me to spare the fellow, whom he 
believes to be a model of righteousness. He 
has gone away convinced that I am a double- 
dyed ingrate, and that I'm too stubborn to rec- 
ognize resplendent virtue when I see it. I'm 

57 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



sorry. I love Cabot; I'd give him half I pos- 
sess — but I can't yield that point." 

This is typical of his attitude toward the 
best of his friends when it comes to a conflict 
of judgment. So the fear entertained of Mr. 
Lodge's malevolent influence if he had become 
Secretary of State had probably little founda- 
tion. With Mr. Roosevelt the counsel of val- 
ued associates is always welcome, but his de- 
cisions he prefers to make himself. 

Neighbors of many years, family intimates, 
a few old school-fellows and college-mates, 
make up most of the first group of friends in 
my classification. Mr. Roosevelt has called 
upon one and another of them at times for some 
public service which involved hard work and 
insufficient remuneration. Such a summons is 
the patent of his faith in their patriotism. In 
the second category is gathered a motley collec- 
tion of types. I remember well the scowl that 
crossed his brow when he read in the news- 
papers that "Joe" Murray, a New York Repub- 
lican ward worker, had introduced in a partizan 
organization a resolution which seemed to re- 
flect upon the honorable conduct of the United 
States Civil-Service Commission when he — 
Roosevelt — was a member of it. "Why, Joe 

58 



A POLITICAL COACH 



Murray was the man who taught me my first 
lessons in practical politics!" he exclaimed. 
"He ought to know better than to be in such 
business." 

He gave the resolution the drubbing it de- 
served, and forced the fighting until the organ- 
ization had crawled through a small hole, and 
gladly, in its anxiety to retreat; but he never 
punished Murray personally, always preferring 
to believe that the poor fellow was misguided 
rather than vicious. The fact that Murray had 
given him his first coaching when he was 
thrown, a greenhorn, among old hands practised 
at the game, had bound the two men together 
not merely for the time or for a few months 
or years thereafter, but virtually for life. This 
limitless gratitude is undoubtedly a weakness 
on Mr. Roosevelt's part, but an amiable weak- 
ness, which shows his extremely human side. 
One of his first thoughts as President was to 
find a place in the Federal service where Mur- 
ray would fit, and put him into it. The posi- 
tion that offered itself in due season, and was 
promptly filled, was the deputy commissioner- 
ship of immigration at Ellis Island. 

Another of his helpers in time of need who 
is now reaping the reward of their lucky con- 

59 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tact is General Leonard Wood, the military 
governor of the Moro country in the Philip- 
pines. Close as their companionship has since 
become, the two men did not know each other 
till the winter of 1897-98, a few months before 
the outbreak of the war with Spain. It had 
always been a fond dream of Roosevelt's to take 
part in a war. He had come upon the stage 
too late for the great struggle for the Union, 
but his assurance that Spain would one day 
have to be forced out of Cuba seemed on the 
verge of fulfilment about the time he met Wood, 
in whom he found a man of kindred faith and 
aspirations. They were nearly of an age, and 
both fond of hardy sports. Wood, though only 
an army surgeon, had enjoyed a military train- 
ing in the field, which Roosevelt had not. Cir- 
cumstances, moreover, had once placed Wood 
in command of troops — an extraordinary acci- 
dent for a medical staff-officer — in the midst of 
an Indian campaign, and he had acquitted him- 
self with credit. Anticipating a war in Cuba, 
he had visited the island and looked over some 
of the ground which it was supposed would be 
the site of active hostilities. All these things 
gave his companionship an added interest to 
Roosevelt, who, when President McKinley of- 

60 



MAKING THE SOLDIER 



fered him the command of a regiment, at once 
consented to take its lieutenant-colonelcy if the 
President would make Wood its colonel. 

This looks, at a first glance, more like Roose- 
velt helping Wood than Wood helping Roose- 
velt; but such an assumption leaves out of view 
the fact that Roosevelt, eager to be at the front 
but conscious of his own ignorance of practical 
military affairs, needed most of all a teacher, 
and that Wood was competent to teach him 
just what he would require to know. The idea 
of the Rough Rider regiment was Roosevelt's 
own. For years he had cherished the thought, as 
he watched the bold equestrianism of the cow- 
boys in the West and the fox-hunters and polo- 
players in the East, that here was the finest 
material in the whole country from which to 
recruit a cavalry contingent in case of war. It 
was Roosevelt's name which attracted enlist- 
ments everywhere; Wood's was almost or quite 
unknown. Wood had hardly put Roosevelt 
through his first paces in drill and field tactics, 
in the routine duties of command, and in the 
care of his men, when an accident placed Wood 
in charge of their brigade and raised Roosevelt 
to the head of the regiment. Here the future 
President's nominal rank corresponded for the 

61 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



first time with his actual prestige and authority, 
and he laid the foundation for the military ele- 
ment which entered so largely into his political 
campaigning a few months later. 

Wood's advancement from a captain's grade 
in the army medical service to a full major- 
generalcy in five years is perhaps the most re- 
markable recorded in our day. It places him 
where practically nothing can prevent his at- 
taining the supreme place in his profession 
while he is still a comparatively young man. 
For his latest rise he has to thank President 
Roosevelt, who never has forgotten the helping 
hand held out in 1898. 

General S. B. M. Young also belongs in 
the list of useful friends. He and Roosevelt 
became acquainted in the West a good while 
before Wood came into view. Roosevelt was 
particularly attracted to him by his soldierly 
qualities. Not long before war was declared 
with Spain, at a luncheon in Washington where 
these three were present, the conversation turned 
upon the outlook, and Roosevelt and Wood told 
Young that they were laying their plans to get 
into the war if one came. "Then I will try to 
have you attached to my command, if I have 
one," said Young, "and I'll give you a chance 

62 




Copyright, 1902 by G. GJ. Rockwood. 

COLONEL OF THE ROUGH EIDERS. 



HELPING THE OTHER HALF 

to see some fighting." He was as good as his 
word. The Rough Riders became part of his 
cavalry brigade. Young's attack of fever, in- 
capacitating him for a time, was what devolved 
the command of the brigade on Wood and 
opened to Roosevelt his golden opportunity as 
colonel. Young forged ahead from that day 
forward, and has rounded out his career, by 
grace of President Roosevelt, as the last lieuten- 
ant-general commanding the army and the first 
chief of the general staff. 

Jacob A. Riis was a police reporter on the 
Sun when Roosevelt went back to New York 
to become president of the Board of Police 
Commissioners. Not content with doing his 
daily stint of work and drawing his salary, Riis 
had addressed himself to the task of making 
more tolerable the condition of the poor people 
with whom his duties brought him into con- 
tact. His book, How the Other Half Lives, 
arrested Roosevelt's attention, and the reporter 
was pleased and surprised at finding on his desk 
one day the card of the president of the board, 
with the scribbled sentence, "I have come to 
help." Roosevelt had discovered, through 
Riis's book, the man who could show him where 
a monumental reform might be accomplished, 

. 6 3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



and who would lend a hand at putting it 
through. By their joint efforts they ridded 
New York of scores of vile tenement-houses, 
opened clean breathing-places for the poor 
where filth and foul air had formerly held un- 
disputed sway, compelled the police to do their 
duty even to the helpless denizens of the slums, 
and left the big city a much better place than 
they had found it when they entered on their 
program of improvement. Mr. Riis is still a 
plain citizen. Probably he will, of his own 
choice, always remain such, and win more glory 
from his achievements as one of the people than 
from all the official honors that could be heaped 
upon him; but when the project for the pur- 
chase of the Danish West Indies was under way 
the President offered him the governorship of 
that colony. 

I have chosen these few illustrations as 
typical of many. I am conscious that so bald 
a presentation of them may leave Mr. Roose- 
velt open to the charge of repaying favors done 
to him as a man, with offices which are com- 
mitted to his trust as President. Such a theory, 
however, would rest only on a partial view of 
the facts. Just as Mr. Roosevelt's conception 
of duty ignores all sorts of magnificent ideals 

64 



MY REGIMENT'' 



at long range and fastens itself upon the tasks 
which lie nearest his hand, so his judgment of 
men, and his faith in their ability to do certain 
things, are formed much more surely on their 
accomplishments under his own eyes than on 
any public reputation they may have gained 
elsewhere. He is a good appreciator. He 
knows when a job has been well done for him, 
and he would rather have that evidence of the 
workman's capacity for larger jobs than a hun- 
dred testimonials to the excellence of the same 
man's work for others. 

It is doubtless this sense of personal famil- 
iarity which accounts for the obtrusion of "my 
regiment" into almost every subject that comes 
before him. The Rough Riders were the joy 
of his heart. He had had virtually his pick of 
men; and, realizing the chances of war, he had 
begun from the start a search for lieutenants 
who would do to make into captains, sergeants 
who could safely be raised to lieutenancies, 
corporals who deserved to be sergeants, and 
privates who had corporals' stuff in them. 
Thus he became acquainted substantially with 
all the members of the regiment, certainly with 
all whose characteristics were in any wise pro- 
nounced. As a result, he discovered qualities 

6S 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



in them which many officers would have over- 
looked, and these clung in his memory, so that 
he has since had a trooper story to fit every 
situation. It is worth noting, also, that he has 
had a trooper in the flesh to fit more than one. 
When an enterprise of particular difficulty or 
hazard is to be set afoot for the Government, 
his first thought is always of the men who went 
with him to Cuba. They were a resourceful 
lot, as well as fearless. For the less perilous 
positions, like those of Territorial governor, 
customs appraiser, postmaster, etc., he has 
selected a few; and in positions which com- 
bine a peaceful purpose with an occasional per- 
sonal risk, like forest rangers in the far West, 
a goodly number are making creditable records. 
One bitter disappointment awaited the Pres- 
ident in his effort to make use of his soldier 
friends in civil office. A marshal was to be 
appointed for Arizona. The position is of the 
kind which calls for very little book-learning 
but a great deal of common sense, persistency, 
and courage. The politicians swarmed over 
the White House, recommendations in hand. 
This man was indorsed by the Republican Ter- 
ritorial committee, that one had been a gen- 
erous contributor to the campaign fund, a third 

66 



ROUGH BUT READY 



had once been favorably considered by Presi- 
dent McKinley, and so on. 

"Thank you," said Mr. Roosevelt, "I have 
my man selected. His name is Ben Daniels. 
He has no political backing, but I know him 
clear through for a soldier who never received 
an order which he could not execute. He is 
dead game; and as a marshal, when he goes 
for a malefactor he will fetch him in, if it takes 
all the horses and all the ammunition in the 
Territory." 

"Daniels is a pretty rough character," ar- 
gued the politicians. "Are you sure he'll pass 
muster?" 

"I've seen smoother persons," responded the 
President, without wavering; "but it is not ex- 
actly a polished gentleman I'm looking for to 
hunt down desperate murderers and drag pro- 
fessional highwaymen to justice." 

So in went the name of Benjamin Franklin 
Daniels to the Senate. The nomination was re- 
ferred, in the regular order, to the Committee 
on Judiciary, of which Mr. Hoar of Massachu- 
setts, the most scholarly and refined of Senators, 
is chairman. The choice for an important Fed- 
eral office of just such a specimen — an ex-deni- 
zen of a Southwestern mining-camp who lacked 

67 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



half an ear as a memento of an encounter with 
a "bad man" — was not quite the customary 
thing; but it was allowed to pass till somebody 
came forward with the charge that Daniels was 
a hard drinker. This was brought to the notice 
of the President. 

"Daniels used to drink hard," he asserted. 
"He has told me all about that. But he's 
straight now." 

Then came an accuser with a story of the 
candidate's gambling propensities. 

"Quite true," responded the President, when 
questioned. "Ben never made any secret of 
that. He used to have an interest in a game, 
but it was a square one. The code of manners 
in the community where he grew up is not 
quite that of New England. A good many 
men of first-rate mettle in the pioneer West 
have drunk out of a bottle and paid their way 
at times from the proceeds of a poker-pot. 
These are not practises which we sterner moral- 
ists should commend on general principles, but 
we have to judge such things comparatively, 
and in the light of the local environment. I 
never heard that Ben was a 'skin' gambler, and 
in any event he has promised me that he will 
not touch a card while he remains in office." 

68 



A FATAL DISCOVERY 



Thus matters seemed to be moving fairly 
for the marshal-elect, when suddenly some one 
who had been following his life's trail made 
the startling announcement that a person named 
Benjamin Daniels had once served a term in 
the Wyoming Penitentiary for theft. The 
parallel between the convict Daniels and the 
Daniels who had been named for marshal of 
Arizona seemed complete in such particulars 
as age and appearance. 

The critics became inquisitive again, and 
this time their questions found the President 
perturbed in spirit. The prison record showed 
that, when the thief Daniels was sentenced, the 
court had taken cognizance of his youth and 
made his punishment lighter than it might, be- 
cause it was plain that he had been led into 
his criminal escapade by older and more force- 
ful men. 

But that was not the phase of the question 
uppermost in the President's mind. His one 
thought was: "Has Ben Daniels deceived me 
by holding back this fact when I asked him 
for a full and honest story of his life?" The 
telegraph was called into play. Daniels ad- 
mitted his identity with the former convict. A 
pathetic letter followed his despatch of confes- 

6 9 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



sion. It told of his effort to live down the 
past, and the hope he had cherished that his 
colonel's belief in him would open a new and 
better chapter in his career. But it was too 
late. His commission, already signed, was can- 
celed. One thing Theodore Roosevelt can not 
brook: the discovery of bad faith where he has 
placed his trust. 



70 



CHAPTER V 

PRESIDENT AND CABINET 

Official families by inheritance — First break in the Roosevelt Cabi- 
net — What led to Mr. Gage's resignation — A quaint tribute 
— Other changes — A new chair at the table, and how filled. 

THE relations of Presidents with their Cab- 
inets make an interesting chapter in the polit- 
ical history of the country from the days of 
Washington down. Mr. Roosevelt's relation 
to his was unique. It came to him by inherit- 
ance, but not as Arthur's descended; for Arthur 
had become Vice-President through a make- 
shift move at the conclusion of the national 
convention of 1880, and represented, then and 
later, the element in his party antipodal to that 
which had supported Garfield. Roosevelt, on 
the other hand, had been nominated for Vice- 
President by the same united party that had 
nominated McKinley for a second term as 
President. He was easily the first choice of 
his whole party for the second place in the 
Government, just as he was the second choice 

7 1 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



of his whole party for the first place. There 
was no personal antagonism between President 
and Vice-President. When McKinley fell, 
therefore, and Roosevelt stepped into the vacant 
office, his inauguration was in the nature of 
the acceptance of a trusteeship. He had but 
one course to follow — the completion of the 
work McKinley had begun, with only such 
additions or emendations as the shifting tide of 
events during the next three years might de- 
mand. Hence, what more natural than that 
he should try to keep at his side the same group 
of advisers whom McKinley had brought to- 
gether to help execute the policies mapped out 
for a second and more memorable term? Mr. 
Roosevelt's invitation to the whole Cabinet to 
remain with him was offered almost at the bed- 
side of the murdered President. It derived a 
special solemnity from its surroundings, and 
every one concerned was impressed by this. It 
was accepted as it was made, in entire good 
faith, and without reserve. The publicists of 
the country received it as a first earnest of the 
new President's conservatism and good sense; 
the people applauded it as his response to a 
generous impulse thoroughly characteristic of 
him. 

72 



MR. GAGE'S RETIREMENT 

But human nature is only human nature. 
As one coat will not fit all men, so with one 
group of counselors. It was not long before 
circumstances seemed to make certain changes 
in the Cabinet imperative. Mr. Gage, the 
Secretary of the Treasury, was the first to drop 
out, after the unusual term of five years of 
service. The parting, which occasioned much 
comment at the time and has been made the 
subject of gross misrepresentation, was in the 
best of friendship, and yet there is no denying 
that the first suggestion of it came with the 
manifestation by the President of a trait pecul- 
iarly his own. From the time he entered upon 
an executive career, it had been Mr. Roose- 
velt's fortune to be thrown with men lacking 
his masterful ways, and he had fallen into the 
habit of taking charge of affairs himself, re- 
gardless of what the specific relations of others 
might be to them. As President of the United 
States he was, of course, supreme in the Admin- 
istration, and at liberty to do what he chose in 
the domain of officers whom he could appoint 
and remove. But President McKinley had al- 
ways been punctilious about the formal cour- 
tesies even with his own appointees. They had 
grown to expect a certain routine to be followed 

73 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



in all administrative work. Mr. Gage was 
himself a strict observer of the proprieties, and 
looked for them in others. This meant that 
when any information was desired by the Presi- 
dent concerning a matter within the Treasury 
jurisdiction, he should make his request for it 
of the Secretary, who in turn would call upon 
the proper subordinate for the facts, and trans- 
mit the subordinate's report, after revising 
it, to the President. The correspondence in 
such cases constitutes what is known in official 
phraseology as a "record," and a copy of it is 
kept on file. 

Mr. Roosevelt has always felt, however, ex- 
cept as to business which involved the fixing of 
individual responsibility for an official act, that 
"records" were a good deal of a nuisance. Just 
as he discarded his sword in Cuba because it 
got in the way of his legs, so at an early stage 
of his career in office he discarded all routine 
methods where mere information was to be 
sought and obtained. As Civil-Service Com- 
missioner he used to say that if he wished to 
learn how something was going on in an ex- 
ecutive office, he could get more satisfaction out 
of a few minutes' talk face to face with the 
clerk who had charge of the business itself 

74 



DISCIPLINE AT A DISCOUNT 



than from a fortnight's formal correspondence 
with the head of the department. This idea 
he carried into all his work from that time for- 
ward. Red tape grew more and more hate- 
ful to him. As President, therefore, when he 
wished to know something about the immigra- 
tion service, and know it right away, he would 
send for the Commissioner-General of Immi- 
gration, and in a half-hour's conversation go 
over the whole ground; or if he wished to as- 
certain something definite about the conduct of 
a certain public officer, he would send for the 
chief of the Secret Service and instruct him 
orally whom to watch and what trails to pursue. 
Doubtless this did save a great deal of time 
and avoid much useless circumlocution, but it 
was not the "regular" thing to do. Moreover, 
strongly as it may appeal to the judgment of 
a majority of civilians in private life, every 
one conversant with official business knows that 
such a practise can not become general with- 
out utterly demoralizing a service by under- 
mining its discipline, since that must rest upon 
each subordinate's sense of responsibility to his 
immediate chief. It is hardly wonderful, there- 
fore, that Secretary Gage soon grew restive un- 
der the restraints of an office in which he was 

75 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



expected to defer always to his own superior, 
while his lieutenants were not expected to show 
like deference to him. 

I would not be understood as saying that 
this was the cause of Mr. Gage's retirement 
from the Cabinet. It was only the first of a 
group of contributory influences. The drop- 
ping of George R. Bidwell and the appoint- 
ment of Nevada N. Stranahan as Collector 
of Customs at New York in opposition to 
the wishes of the Secretary, who retained to 
the last his objection to any change, increased 
the tension of the situation pretty nearly to the 
breaking-point. But there were other consid- 
erations involved also. Mr. Gage had made 
a wonderfully successful administration of the 
fiscal affairs of the Government. He had car- 
ried the nation through a foreign war not only 
without impairing the quality of its currency, 
but with such credit as enabled him to begin 
refunding the public debt at 2 per cent, and to 
see even the 2-per-cent bonds quoted at a pre- 
mium. He was at the zenith of his prestige 
as a financier; his name was as familiar as a 
household word on every bourse in the world. 
No higher honors were within his reach. 
Withal, he was advancing in years and nearing 

76 



ADDITIONAL REASONS 



the crest from which all roads lead downward. 
The business of the country, unless the lessons 
of the past were misleading, was soon to enter 
the period of liquidation which surely follows 
an era of uncommon prosperity. To use his 
own homely phrase, "When that time comes, 
I'm willing to let some other fellow walk the 
floor." If, therefore, Mr. Gage were to return 
to private life while still in condition to take 
a prominent part in its activities, the time to 
do so seemed to be at hand. A dozen most flat- 
tering opportunities lay open before him. One 
of these he presently decided to accept, having 
first placed his resignation in the President's 
hands and asked to be released not later than 
a certain date. The President had urged him 
to remain, but, finding the Secretary's resolve 
unalterable, yielded to his request. 

Not an unpleasant word passed between the 
two men at any stage of their relations. The 
President knew Mr. Gage's value, but recog- 
nized the wide difference in their training and 
the irreconcilable variance of their points of 
view on certain matters. Mr. Gage, though 
disagreeing with the President in more than one 
opinion and realizing the essential antagonism 
of their methods, cherished only admiration of 

77 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



his young chief's character and wished him 
every success. I remember that one day, just 
before his retirement, he was describing to me 
a vigorous stand the President had taken on a 
question called up in Cabinet; when, raising 
one clenched fist in air and bringing it down 
upon his office table with a resounding bang, he 
threw his head back and exclaimed in his quaint 
way: "Take him all around, there's the finest 
forty-year-older I ever saw!" 

Many persons, deceived by false reports of 
disaffection, assumed that Mr. Gage's resigna- 
tion was the first symptom of a general disin- 
tegration of the Cabinet. My own opinion, 
based upon the unwritten history of the period, 
was that, so far from being symptomatic of 
changes yet to come, this break simply fur- 
nished an outlet for some of the administrative 
humors which might have resulted in a general 
eruption if they had been allowed to accumu- 
late under the surface. In other words, it 
called sharply to the mind of the President a 
few possibilities which had not come seriously 
home to him before, and undoubtedly had the 
effect of modifying certain of his tendencies. 
Nothing can change his own directness into 
indirection, or soften his contempt for mere 

78 



TWO OTHER CHANGES 



bureaucratic routine; but if he has not wholly 
ceased his habit of reaching into a department 
over the head of its chief and negotiating with 
the subordinates face to face, he at least tries 
to remember to speak of the matter to the chief, 
so that the officer responsible for the manage- 
ment of the department shall not be ignorant 
of what is passing therein. 

Two other changes in the Cabinet roster oc- 
curred during the first year of Mr. Roosevelt's 
presidency. Both of these were free from even 
the suggestion of such preliminary friction as 
gave the prime impulse to Mr. Gage's retire- 
ment. Charles Emory Smith, who resigned the 
postmaster-generalship, had planned to do this 
even if Mr. McKinley had remained President, 
as his private business interests demanded an 
attention which he could not give them while 
in office, and he could not afford to sacrifice his 
whole future to a longer stay in Washington. 
Secretary Long resigned the navy portfolio be- 
cause he was thoroughly tired. The domestic 
bereavement and unremitting anxiety which 
had clouded the entire period of his Cabinet 
service could have only one effect upon a man 
with such a passion as his for home and family 
and peace. The associations of a public career 
7 79 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



at the capital became distasteful to him, and 
he longed for a chance to return to the quiet 
of his old life and occupations. 

Secretary Moody, who succeeded Mr. Long, 
formed while in Congress the pleasantest sort 
of an acquaintance with Mr. Roosevelt. They 
were fellow members of a little circle in Wash- 
ington who saw a good deal of each other out 
of office hours. It was composed largely of 
Eastern men in the executive and legislative 
branches of the Government, who were bound 
together by their common youth and by the tie 
of active interest in the same subjects. Mr. 
Moody is essentially a man of the people, reared 
in a community of hardy fisher-folk on the 
Massachusetts coast; his climb to his present 
eminence has called into play all the bold and 
rugged traits in his composition, and this is 
the sort of thing that captures a heart like the 
President's. His service as a member of the 
House Committee on Appropriations and his 
interest in naval affairs seemed to give him a 
peculiar fitness for the head of a department 
which had before it the task of strengthening 
the sea power of the United States. 

Mr. Root, who was President McKinley's 
Secretary of War, remained under President 

80 



KNOX, ROOT, CORTELYOU 

Roosevelt till he had completed the reforms 
in the military establishment to which he had 
addressed himself at the start, and then resigned, 
greatly to the regret of all his associates. He, 
however, had been Mr. Roosevelt's close friend 
and adviser in New York politics before either 
came to Washington for his final triumph. In 
the Cabinet he and Mr. Knox, the Attorney- 
General, supplied an element which Mr. Roose- 
velt lacked — the faculty of cool and patient cal- 
culation of technical problems into which no 
component of human personality entered. 

Of Secretary Cortelyou it suffices to say that 
his appointment as the first Secretary of Com- 
merce was due to his display of a special tal- 
ent for organization. He is not a discoverer 
or an inventor. He is not a trained economist. 
He has never shown any particular gifts for 
statecraft in its broader sense. But he is a 
rigidly upright man, and has certain practi- 
cal virtues which the President admires vastly 
— in others — caution, method, and a genius for 
making minutiae count. Mr. Cortelyou might 
have been unequal to the perplexities of the 
Treasury administration, or those which Sec- 
retary Root had to face in effecting his mili- 
tary reforms; but of his ability to install a new 

81 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



department and set it running, to compose the 
differences between the existing mechanisms 
transferred to it, to man and equip the new 
bureaus created especially for it, to trim the 
overlapping functions of all these component 
parts and readjust their relations so as to re- 
duce their friction to a minimum: of this there 
was no room for doubt. Moreover, the new 
department had been for years a dream of Mr. 
Roosevelt's. It was one of the progressive ideas 
advanced in his first message as President. Mr. 
Cortelyou had been closely associated with him 
throughout the period in which the dream ac- 
quired substance, and Congress molded that 
substance into its final form. What had been 
in the President's mind had passed thence into 
Mr. Cortelyou's by daily contact. The factor 
knew just what ends his principal had in view, 
and the means by which he purposed to reach 
these, if possible. No one else, probably, could 
have executed his initial plans with so little 
hesitancy and so few mistakes. 



82 



CHAPTER VI 

TWO COUNCILORS IN PARTICULAR 

Secretary Shaw's personality — His rise in the world — A Yankee 
who "gets there" — Postmaster- General Payne — The Cabi- 
net politician — Faulty training for an investigator. 

LIMITS of space forbid my touching espe- 
cially on any of the members of President 
Roosevelt's Cabinet except those who have gone 
out or come in during his term. The most 
notable of his own appointments are those of 
Secretary of the Treasury Shaw and Postmas- 
ter-General Payne. Both were made while the 
young President was still somewhat new at 
his work, and the choice of men for two posi- 
tions of so commanding importance affords us 
an interesting glimpse of his mental processes. 

Leslie M. Shaw was a lawyer and banker 
in a small interior town. He had acquired no 
repute as a financier. It is doubtful whether 
his name was recognized, when first mentioned 
by the press in connection with the succession 
to Lyman J. Gage, by ten readers in every hun- 

83 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



dred, and even the ten probably had vague and 
variegated notions of who he was. The Presi- 
dent himself did not know him on his business 
side, but only as a conspicuous political figure 
in the Middle West. They had met a few 
times while Mr. Roosevelt was making one of 
his campaign dashes through the upper Missis- 
sippi Valley; all the rest of their impressions 
of each other were absorbed from the atmos- 
phere and an occasional anecdote. 

Shaw was genial and hearty in manner, a 
good story-teller, fond of his joke. But from 
behind his bluff and apparently careless ex- 
terior he looked out upon the world through 
a pair of keen, shrewd, gray-blue eyes that saw 
a deal more than their owner always cared to 
speak about; and his quiet chuckle often had 
more significance in the ears of his intimate 
friends than his words. He was too self-poised 
to be a respecter of persons; the multimillion- 
aire could no more unsettle his equanimity than 
the wage-laborer. He was candid enough, 
even when addressing a Republican audience, 
to praise President Cleveland for saving the 
public credit in the stormy days of 1893-94. 
Mr. Roosevelt took a fancy to him at their first 
meeting and retained a vivid memory of it. 

84 



MR. SHAW'S ORIGIN 



But why should this man have been chosen 
for Secretary of the Treasury? Thereby hangs 
a tale. 

Mr. Shaw was a Vermonter by birth. Early 
in life he had drifted to Iowa, where he had 
received his education for the bar and begun 
practise. Like a multitude of others begin- 
ning in the same fashion, he found the law a 
hard taskmistress, and her prizes few and slow 
of dispensation. He struggled along for a 
while without complaint, but his Maker had 
not given him eyes and ears and a brain for 
nothing, and he began to consider whether 
there were not ways, outside of the narrow path 
of his profession, by which he could stimulate 
his lagging income. A visit to his boyhood 
home suggested a plan. The farms there were 
pretty well worn out, and mortgagors could not 
afford to pay more than 4 or 5 per cent interest 
on their loans; at that low rate, indeed, they 
often found themselves unable to keep up, and 
stories of foreclosure, discouragement and re- 
moval were to be heard on every hand. But 
in Iowa, behold the difference: rich soil, heavy 
crops, well-packed granaries, a thrifty, con- 
tented farming population, and yet loans on 
farm mortgages commanding 8 and 10 per cent. 

8S 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



The difference was traceable, of course, to the 
fact that Vermont was an old community, long 
known in the haunts of capital as a next-door 
neighbor, whereas Iowa was a stranger at a dis- 
tance, hazily confused in the minds of most of 
the Eastern money-lenders with the rest of a 
big Out West whence their loans sometimes 
came back and sometimes didn't. 

One bright morning young Shaw awoke 
with a start. "Why," said he, "should I not 
take some of the Eastern capital which is go- 
ing begging at 4 and 5 per cent, and clap it 
into Iowa mortgages which will gladly yield 
8 and 10, and pocket half the difference as my 
commission?" 

It did not take him long to put this ingenious 
scheme into execution. It worked to a charm. 
Without ceasing to be a lawyer, he became also 
a banker, making Iowa farm mortgages his spe- 
cialty. His Western friends were delighted to 
have the means of enlarging their borders, put- 
ting up additional buildings, buying new ma- 
chinery. His Eastern friends were delighted 
at the increase of their revenues. His firm 
made money hand over fist. 

Then came the first threatening sign. Two 
or three bad-crop years wrought Kansas into 

86 



THE SILVER CRAZE 



a fever. The Farmers' Alliance, starting as a 
cross-roads society, gathered unto it most of 
the malcontent elements in the agricultural and 
mining West, and they all with one accord 
began to concoct nostrums instead of giving 
nature a chance. The Populist movement took 
shape; the Democrats as a party marched into 
the Populist hospital. The free coinage of sil- 
ver, once a mere factional fad, became the one 
great partizan issue before the whole country. 
The East, as a matter of course, took fright. It 
knew too little of the West to distinguish be- 
tween the sound and the affected parts. It 
classed Iowa, the rich farming State with her 
trustworthy climate, her well-satisfied people, 
and her common-sense grip on the honest 
dollar, with some of her delirious neighbors. 
"Send us back our money," cried the East, "and 
look to us for no more till you can give us some 
assurance that the hundred cents which go out 
to you will return one hundred, and not fifty!" 
It was a sorry outlook for the banking sys- 
tem established by Mr. Shaw. He saw that, 
in order to convince the East that Iowa was 
not smitten with the free-silver epidemic, heroic 
measures must be taken. He accordingly 
plunged into politics. Wherever he could get 

87 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



a hearing he waked the echoes with his speeches 
for sound money. Not content with the plea 
for a conservative bimetalism with which more 
timid orators were trying to stay the spread of 
the scourge, he took the aggressive, and boldly 
demanded the single gold standard, scorning all 
evasions and mental reservations. He made a 
good fight. It caught and held popular atten- 
tion. The mass of the voting population of 
Iowa liked it. In due season they seated him 
in the Governor's chair by a handsome majority. 
At Des Moines fortune favored him, and he 
made few bad errors. It was as Governor, with 
this record behind him, that he encountered 
Mr. Roosevelt, then running for Vice-Presi- 
dent. Neither of the twain could look into the 
future far enough to see what was in store for 
himself or for the other. Each cherished the 
hope that the highest place in the gift of the 
people might one day be his, and each had set 
1904 as the date for their contest of strength. 

Then came the tragedy at Buffalo. From 
the hour when President McKinley breathed 
his last Mr. Shaw became a Roosevelt man for 
1904. His own aspirations were shattered by 
Czolgosz's bullet. When Mr. Gage retired 
President Roosevelt's first thought turned to 

88 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT 

the hero of the Iowa gold-standard campaign. 
He reasoned that the man who was not afraid 
to make such a fight for honest money as a 
State issue would not fail when the need came 
for self-assertion in a national crisis. 

Possibly occasions have arisen since that 
day to raise doubts in the President's mind as 
to the wisdom of his choice. Mr. Shaw's first 
radical departures from all the precedents of 
his office were made during Mr. Roosevelt's 
absence from Washington, and therefore with- 
out consultation. The stir they created in 
financial circles was enough to cause some mis- 
givings in even the stoutest heart. But the 
Secretary wore well. He proved to be, if not 
a great financial light, at least a man of expedi- 
ents, true to his Yankee type. Measures had 
been introduced in Congress to relieve the con- 
gestion of the surplus revenues in the Treasury 
vaults, but an obstinate opposition had pre- 
vented their passage. Many lifelong currency 
reformers were discouraged, but Mr. Shaw 
said: "If we can not get new legislation, let us 
see whether we have yet exhausted the resources 
of the old." And with that he prepared his 
plan for restoring the surplus to the channels 
of trade by depositing in the banks all the 

8 9 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



money that was not actually needed as a work- 
ing balance for the Treasury. 

"You are bound to have your surplus gain 
on you, though," the reformers reminded him, 
"for the law requires that every dollar paid in 
for customs shall go into the Treasury and stay 
there; and every dollar paid in for internal 
taxes, though subject to deposit in the banks 
directly from the pocket of the taxpayer, must 
stay in the Treasury vaults, if it once gets bodily 
into them, till an act of Congress lifts it out 
again." 

"Not so," returned the Secretary. "The in- 
ternal revenue receipts are always construc- 
tively in the Treasury when they are on deposit 
in the banks. It makes no difference whether 
they have never gone into the Treasury, or 
whether I have taken them in first and then let 
them out. The whole transaction is a mere 
matter of bookkeeping." 

"We must have new legislation to make the 
currency system more elastic, so that its volume 
will increase and decrease in ready response to 
commercial needs," said the reformers. 

"Suppose we try existing law and see how 
far it will carry us," was the Secretary's answer. 
And he proceeded to release for use as security 

90 



PROBLEM OF ELASTICITY 

for bank-note circulation all the Government 
bonds which the banks had pledged as security 
for Federal deposits, letting the banks substi- 
tute for these the soundest State and municipal 
bonds; for the law as he read it, although dis- 
tinctly requiring United States bonds as security 
for bank-note issues, vested in the Secretary a 
rather wide discretion as to the collateral he 
might accept for Treasury deposits. 

So much for the quick and easy increase of 
circulation. "But elasticity involves also the 
ability of the banks to retire their notes just as 
quickly and easily," argued the reformers, "and 
the present law limits the total retirements of 
all the banks to three million dollars a month." 

"Tut!" was the Secretary's reply; "you've 
read the statute carelessly. It limits not the 
retirement of bank circulation, but only the 
deposit of legal-tender notes in the Treasury 
with a view to redeeming it. The banks can 
retire their circulation as fast as they wish to, 
if they can put their hands on their notes." 

And so the play of objections and the coun- 
terplay of unsuspected ways and means has 
gone on. Whatever doubts the President may 
at first have entertained of the Secretary's 
breadth were long ago resolved by the discovery 

9i 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



of his sharpness. Mr. Roosevelt likes a man 
who wastes no time explaining why he can not 
do a thing, but does it; who, if he lacks the 
most suitable tools, seizes those which lie near- 
est his hand and goes to work. Such a man 
he seems to have found in Leslie M. Shaw, 
thanks to an instinct which guided him straight 
when elaborate reasoning would probably have 
led him in another direction. 

Charles Emory Smith was succeeded as 
Postmaster-General by Henry C. Payne. This 
appointment occasioned the most wide-spread 
surprise. Mr. Roosevelt had a reputation 
throughout the world as a political reformer; 
Mr. Payne had a reputation throughout the 
country as a dyed-in-the-wool politician, with 
a politician's traditional contempt for reform. 
What could two such men have in common? 

It was because of something which they did 
not have in common that Mr. Payne was chosen. 
Mr. Roosevelt, self-confident in most situa- 
tions, always harbored a feeling of ignorance 
and helplessness about politics in the narrower 
sense; and when Mr. Smith announced his pur- 
pose to retire the President decided that now 
was the time to bring into the Cabinet an ele- 
ment it utterly lacked. There was not a single 

92 



THE CABINET POLITICIAN 

practical politician in the group. This was not 
surprising in view of the fact that Mr. McKin- 
ley, who had called it together, was himself by 
far the ablest politician in the United States, 
and needed no aid in the line of his own spe- 
cialty. Mr. Payne, who had a great name as 
a party manager and was understood to have 
a wonderful grasp of detail, was accordingly 
summoned to the vacant place. He was chair- 
man of the Republican National Executive 
Committee, and it was expected that his coun- 
sels at the Cabinet table would turn the scale 
on mooted points of policy where the argu- 
ments pro and con seemed evenly balanced. 
The question would then be reduced to : "Other 
considerations being equal, what would be the 
expedient course to take?" And Mr. Payne's 
advice would settle it. 

But the plans of Presidents are no surer of 
execution than those of other men. Mr. Roose- 
velt must soon have awakened to two truths 
which many of his friends had already tried 
in vain to impress upon him: first, that it re- 
quires a different class of talents to handle the 
petty politics within a party and to handle the 
larger politics of a whole nation; and, second, 
that, in view of his unparalleled personal popu- 

93 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



larity, he could beat the professional politicians 
at their own game, two to one. 

Mr. Payne had been all his life a party man- 
ager, but not a popular leader. The subordi- 
nates in his own party organization to whom 
he issued an order knew that they must obey 
it without pausing to ask questions. If he 
favored seating one set of delegates and reject- 
ing another set who were knocking at a con- 
vention's doors, and he was able to sway the 
decision, that was the end of the matter. The 
result might excite some dissatisfaction within 
the party, or give a certain faction an advantage 
in the next primaries, but that did not mean 
necessarily a change of party fortunes at the 
polls. When he came into the Cabinet, how- 
ever, a wider vista of possible consequences 
opened before every one of his official acts. 
Any policy he mapped out would affect not 
merely his party subordinates or a party fac- 
tion but the whole American people, com- 
prising all parties and all factions. 

One of the first problems which presented 
itself to Mr. Payne was the Indianola outrage. 
The post-office at Indianola, Miss., had been 
presided over for some years, and with entire 
acceptability as far as known, by Mrs. Minnie 

94 



INDIANOLA INCIDENT 



Cox, a colored woman of good repute. A re- 
vival of race proscription which broke out in 
the winter of 1901-02 caused a mob to collect 
and threaten Mrs. Cox with violence unless she 
resigned her office. She was not conscious of 
any offense, but through fear sent her resigna- 
tion to Washington and with her family fled 
from the town. 

All Mr. Payne's combativeness came to the 
surface at once. He was not only indignant at 
the poor woman's treatment, but he recognized 
the dramatic features of the situation. He was 
ready to proceed to any lengths in reasserting 
the majesty of the Federal Government. Had 
he been President, we should undoubtedly have 
seen Mrs. Cox drawn from her place of refuge 
and sent back to Indianola under a military 
escort, and a cordon of troops around the post- 
office would have protected its occupants and 
its business from further molestation till the ex- 
citement had died down. 

He was not President, however. The man 
who was felt not a whit less indignant, but mani- 
fested his sentiment in a way that, without any 
sacrifice of impressiveness, saved the dignity of 
the Government and raised no constitutional 
issues. He simply closed the post-office, and 
8 95 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



allowed the citizens of Indianola to pay for 
their folly by going five miles to the next office 
for their mail. The punishment fitted the 
crime to a dot: a community which had re- 
lapsed into barbarism had no longer any claim 
upon the luxuries that accompany modern civi- 
lization. No armed force was sent to compel 
it to be decent against its will; a privilege it 
had enjoyed while decent simply dropped out 
when it surrendered its self-respect. 

The next problem which came before Mr. 
Payne was the cleansing of his own executive 
household. I refer to the investigation of the 
scandals in the postal service which kept the 
American people under a stress of mingled 
curiosity and disgust for the better part of the 
year 1903. 

It is but just to say at the outset that Mr. 
Payne has borne in this matter a great deal of 
blame which he does not deserve. When the 
charges of fraud were first brought to his notice 
he carried them to the President and announced 
his purpose of investigating them and punish- 
ing any wrongdoing he discovered. The only 
point on which the President and he appear to 
have disagreed in judgment was the method of 
proceeding, and here is where the essential dif- 

96 



MR. PAYNE'S TRAINING 



ference in the nature and training of the two 
men affected their points of view. Mr. Roose- 
velt had been throughout his career fighting 
in the open and challenging all comers. Mr. 
Payne had never held public office, but had 
done all his work as a disciplinarian within the 
Republican organization and his fighting from 
behind the party breastworks. When a season 
of stump-speaking was to begin, he had pre- 
pared the statistics of crime among the Demo- 
crats and the history of numberless virtuous acts 
among the Republicans, with which to impress 
listening crowds; but never the reverse. If an 
investigation was to be made for the purpose of 
collecting material for the next campaign book, 
it was never his own party, but the other, that 
he caused to be investigated. He was puzzled 
to decide just how to go at the task of raking 
over the misdeeds of his Republican associates. 
Who could tell whither the trails might 
lead? Might not the revelations be seized by 
the Democrats and used as campaign capital? 
Would it not be best to have all the house-clean- 
ing done by the family, and within the family, 
and its results known to the family alone? 
Grub out every rootlet and shred of dishonesty, 
by all means; but would not needless publicity 

97 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



give rise to scandals, and scandals damage the 
party? 

The President's theory was that no amount 
of publicity could possibly damage the party, 
or anybody connected with it, so much as a sus- 
picion in the popular mind that the Admin- 
istration was drawing a cloak over crime. 
The detective machinery must be set to work 
secretly, of course, lest some of the offenders 
take fright prematurely and spread the alarm 
among the rest, and those who were clever 
enough should be able to cover their tracks and 
baffle pursuit. But if, as seemed inevitable, the 
facts should leak out, no attempt must be made 
to deny or minimize them; to mislead the peo- 
ple would be worse than advertising the whole 
business to the world at first. 

Mr. Payne's lifelong habit of sneering at 
accusations aimed against him and his, how- 
ever, was too strong to be overcome in an in- 
stant. Before he was fully aware of what he 
was doing he had begun throwing contempt 
upon the published accounts of the investiga- 
tion in progress. When the charges of Sey- 
mour W. Tulloch were filed, he set out with 
an assertion that they did not amount to any- 
thing, and then, when their substance had found 

9 8 



HOT-AIR" CHARGES 



its way into print in spite of him, jauntily dis- 
missed them as merely "hot air." 

No extraordinary keenness of insight is 
needed to see the folly of such an attitude when 
assumed by the head of a great department 
toward a scandal which had tainted the whole 
atmosphere of that department. The time for 
discovering that the Tulloch charges were only 
"hot air" would have come when the charges 
had been examined and discredited by evi- 
dence, or the lack of it. It was the same way 
at every stage of the proceedings. First Mr. 
Payne would talk to no one about what was 
going on, then he would go to the opposite ex- 
treme and become loquacious. One day he 
would insist that the press had dragged up the 
whole miserable business for sensational pur- 
poses, and was magnifying molehills into moun- 
tains; the next, he would declare that, gross as 
were the iniquities already brought to light, he 
foresaw worse revelations yet to come. These 
shifts of position were attributed in some quar- 
ters to bad faith and a purpose to deceive the 
public, in others to a frequent change of policy 
by the Administration. As a matter of fact, 
they were merely the fruit of Mr. Payne's idio- 
syncrasies. He had been for years an invalid, 

99 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



whose illness took on changeful phases from 
day to day. It might find him in good spirits 
on waking, and leave him in deep dejection at 
bedtime. One week he needed all his will 
power to force himself through his regular 
routine of duty, the next would see him as eager 
as a fighting-cock. Time-tried campaigner as 
he was, the maker and destroyer of other men's 
political fortunes, he had a heart as tender as 
a woman's in the presence of distress; and a 
fresh discovery that some trusted employee had 
been leading a double life would throw over 
him a pall of depression of which he could not 
relieve himself for a fortnight. 

Through the whole of this trying period the 
single prominent figure that stood always in 
one place, with face turned in one direction, 
was the President's. His policy never wavered, 
his force of character overrode every obstacle. 
Even the indefatigable Bristow, the special in- 
vestigator clothed with the powers of detective, 
judge, jury and executioner, seemed inclined 
to pause now and then in his work and turn 
aside for a moment when the train of testi- 
mony bore too straight toward some public 
officer high in confidence; at once would come 
fresh orders from the White House, never fired 

IOO 



THE PRESIDENT'S FIRMNESS 

into the air for the benefit of the outside multi- 
tude, but shot right at the mark, like: "Follow 
up So-and-so"; "Do not let up on such-and- 
such a line of search"; "The enclosed news- 
paper paragraph suggests a new lead; get your 
hands on everybody concerned." 

When the prosecution of the thieves and 
grafters seemed to lag a little more than circum- 
stances justified, and the District Attorney ex- 
plained that the delay was due to the immense 
burden of work thrown upon the law-officers of 
the Government, the President quietly reached 
out and brought to their aid two of the best 
lawyers he knew in private life: Charles J. 
Bonaparte, a sworn foe to spoilsmen everywhere 
and an unsparing critic of Federal administra- 
tions in the past, and Holmes Conrad, a stanch 
Democrat of the old school, who could have no 
compunctions of any sort in hunting down Re- 
publican rogues. All the "politics" of the 
situation, as far as Mr. Roosevelt could see, was 
the politics of capturing rascals and putting 
them into the penitentiary or the pillory, re- 
gardless of who they were or by whom ap- 
pointed, or what the particular influence that 
still stood at their backs. If damage were to 
come to the party, it would come, he believed, 

IOI 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



from having rottenness in the postal service, not 
from digging it out. 

Mr. Payne's unfortunate lack of discretion 
was revealed also in dealing with the Dela- 
ware cases, where he involved the President 
quite needlessly in a snarl with the best people 
of the country. But that matter must be left 
for another chapter. 



1 02 



CHAPTER VII 

"THE LARGER GOOD" AND "THE BEST HE COULD" 

The Cuban reciprocity fight — Buying coalers for the navy — An 
attorney rebuked — New York liquor law enforcement — The 
Shidy case — Keeping faith with a scamp. 

On broad lines, Mr. Roosevelt is guided in 
his action by settled policies; as to the details 
of working these out, he turns to account what- 
ever happens. He takes men as he finds them, 
bolts his disappointments, worships no fetishes. 
"Hitch your wagon to a star," he says, "but al- 
ways remember your limitations. Strive up- 
ward, but realize that your feet must touch the 
ground. In our Government you can only 
work successfully in conjunction with your fel- 
lows." It would probably be safe to say that 
he never laid down a general rule which he 
was not prepared to break the instant he saw it 
blocking the path to an important accomplish- 
ment, or what he calls "the larger good." He 
has a supreme contempt for a mere paper rec- 
ord of consistency, as contrasted with an his- 

103 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



torical record of ends actually achieved; and 
he has no use for the public man who, finding 
it impossible to do ideally the best thing, has 
not cheerfully done "the best he could" and 
thanked God for that. 

President Roosevelt, in his first annual 
message, called upon Congress to enact a law 
authorizing a substantial reduction of the cus- 
toms tariff on Cuban products imported into 
the United States. A President ambitious for 
a paper record simply would have made the 
recommendation and then thrown the blame 
upon Congress for the failure to carry it out. 
But he sought results, not reasons for the lack 
of them. When Congress seemed loath to do 
anything, he stirred it up with a special mes- 
sage. In the first communication he had made 
a simple proposal based upon the idea of our 
winning and holding Cuban friendship; in the 
second, he based his plea on Cuba's own right 
to tariff concessions in exchange for what she 
had granted to us. Still there was no response. 
At the next session the plea was renewed in the 
annual message. When it became apparent 
that no new law could be passed, it was sug- 
gested to him that a treaty might be negotiated. 

"Good," said he, "negotiate a treaty." It 
104 



END, NOT MEANS 



made no difference to him what form the mat- 
ter took — he had set out to get tariff concessions 
for Cuba, and he was bound to have them or 
find out why. Henry T. Oxnard, the North- 
western beet magnate, who had been fighting 
against any concessions to cane-sugar, came to 
the White House one morning to see how the 
land lay. I was in the room when the Presi- 
dent walked up to him and warned him, with 
considerable vigor of utterance, that the penalty 
of his obstructing the effort to procure justice 
for Cuba through reciprocity legislation would 
be a treaty, in which, of course, no provision 
would be made for the differential duties on 
sugar, about which Mr. Oxnard was supposed 
to feel some concern. 

"Are you opposed, Mr. President, to the 
abolition of the differentials?" inquired Mr. 
Oxnard. 

"As I have repeatedly said," was the Presi- 
dent's answer, "it does not make one iota of dif- 
ference to me whether they go off or stay on. 
What I want is to see the United States carry 
out its moral pledge to Cuba, and this fight will 
be kept up forever, if necessary!" 

It was in the same spirit that, after failing 
at two regular sessions to get what he felt was 

105 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



right and just, he called an extraordinary ses- 
sion of the Senate and held it down to its work 
till it had voted its approval of a treaty con- 
tingent only on the confirmatory action of Con- 
gress as a whole. This accomplished, the Pres- 
ident took pains to let it be widely known that 
he purposed convening Congress before the 
regular meeting day in December, and no pro- 
test moved him from his plan. 

What Mr. Roosevelt got out of all this was 
not what he set out to get, but as much as Con- 
gress would give him. He did "the best he 
could," and was content. He has been widely 
criticized for not compelling Congress to do 
its full duty by withholding patronage from 
those members who did not yield. Perhaps 
that would have been a shrewd move, but he 
would have felt awkward and out of place in 
making it. He took the course which com- 
mended itself to him — not necessarily the course 
which seemed best to others— and for it he was 
willing to be responsible. This has always 
been his attitude toward public obligations. He 
has never hugged to his soul the vain delusion 
that he could accomplish moral miracles in an 
age whose saints and prophets do most of their 
crying in the wilderness. 

1 06 



POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES 

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy it was 
a part of his duty to purchase coaling ships for 
the Spanish War. Persons with such craft to 
sell came to him with proposals which would 
have sickened a man with a weaker stomach. 
They knew that in this emergency they had the 
Government at their mercy. He knew it, too. 
The hulks they offered were in many cases fit 
only for a marine bone-yard, and they de- 
manded fancy prices even for these. More- 
over, it was "Take it, or leave it," with them; 
they were not in a mood to haggle with a 
purchaser whom they knew to be in dire 
straits. 

Alternative courses were open to Mr. Roose- 
velt. He could reject all overtures and pub- 
lish the names of the men, the quality of the 
vessels offered, and the prices, in a list which 
would be spread as a newspaper sensation from 
coast to coast. This would hold the whole 
buccaneering crew up to public obloquy for a 
while, but the chances were that it would not 
bring two boats down to a price commensurate 
with their value or attract any more decent bid- 
ders. He would become theatrically famous 
as a "ring-smasher" and a "watch-dog" and all 
that; but the popular indignation, at a time so 

107 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



crowded with stirring events, would cool and 
be forgotten in forty-eight hours, leaving no 
solid results behind. And Heaven only knew, 
if these boats were refused, where any good ones 
were coming from to take their places. 

On the other hand, if he accepted the offers, 
it was with the full foreknowledge that when the 
war was over the hulks would have to be sold 
for anything they would bring, and that the 
difference between their cost and their selling 
price would be charged against the record of 
his administration. It might even happen that 
he would be accused, like many another ex- 
ecutant as honest of purpose as he, of con- 
nivance at working off worthless stuff upon the 
Government. 

He was not the man to waste much time 
figuring on the consequences in this way. The 
one fact which stared him in the face was that 
the Government must have coalers, and right 
away. So he bought what he could not avoid 
buying, and he paid what he was compelled to 
pay. But the fact that he did not exploit the 
situation in order to "make a record" when it 
would not only do no good but also give com- 
fort to the enemy, did not mean that he was 
swallowing his official grievances without a 

1 08 



LECTURING AN ATTORNEY 

grimace. I burst in upon him one day at the 
department without warning, and found him 
in the middle of the floor, indulging in some 
very spirited talk to a visitor. As I was hastily 
withdrawing, he called me back. 

"Stay here," said he; "I want to see you." 
Then he abruptly turned from me and again 
faced the third party, in whom I recognized, 
as the light fell on his face, a lawyer of some 
prominence and an office-holder under a former 
administration. Mr. Roosevelt's teeth were 
set, and very much in evidence, in the peculiar 
way they always are when he is angry. His 
spectacle-lenses seemed to throw off electric 
sparks as his head moved quickly this way and 
that in speaking; and his right fist came down 
from time to time upon the opposite palm as 
if it were an adversary's face. And this was 
about the way he delivered himself: 

"Don't you feel ashamed to come to me to- 
day with another offer, after what you did yes- 
terday? Don't you think that to sell one rotten 
ship to the Government is enough for a single 
week? Are you in such a hurry that you 
couldn't wait even over Sunday to force your 
damaged goods upon the United States? Is it 
an excess of patriotism that brings you here 

109 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

day after day, in this way, or only your realiza- 
tion of our necessities?" 

"Why, our clients — " began the lawyer. 

"Yes, I know all about your clients," burst 
in the Assistant Secretary. "I congratulate 
them on having an attorney who will do work 
for them which he wouldn't have the face to 
do for himself. I should think, after having 
enjoyed the honors you have at the hands of the 
Government, you'd feel a keen pride in your 
present occupation! No, I don't want any 
more of your old tubs. The one I bought yes- 
terday is good for nothing except to sink some- 
where in the path of the enemy's fleet. It will 
be God's mercy if she doesn't go down with 
brave men on her — men who go to war and risk 
their lives, instead of staying home to sell rotten 
hulks to the Government." 

The air of the attorney as he bowed him- 
self out was almost pitiable. The special glint 
did not fade from Mr. Roosevelt's glasses, nor 
did his jaws relax or his fist unclench, till the 
door closed on the retreating figure. Then his 
face lighted with a smile as he advanced to 
greet me. 

"You came just in time," he cried. "I 
wanted you to hear what I had to say to that 

no 



CLOSING SUNDAY SALOONS 



fellow; not" — and here his voice rose on the 
high falsetto wave which is always a sign that 
he is enjoying an idea while framing it in words 
— "not that it would add materially to the sum 
of your pleasure, but that it would humiliate 
him to have any one else present while 1 gave 
him his punishment. It is the only means I 
have of getting even." 

One of the enterprises on which Mr. Roose- 
velt had set his heart when he accepted the 
Police Commissionership in New York was the 
closing of the saloons on Sunday. This was 
not because he was a teetotaler himself, or an 
extremist as to Sunday observance. But he was 
an out-and-out believer in the rule of law, and 
if a law was on the statute-book, and he was 
appointed a public agent to enforce it, enforced 
it should be. When the State got tired of the 
operation of any law, it was privileged to re- 
peal it; but he would have no hand in keeping 
it alive but crippled. 

Moreover, the half-way measures formerly 
pursued had not only put a premium on law- 
breaking, but lent a certain dignity to black- 
mail by making it an official trade. The saloon- 
keepers who were able and willing to bribe the 
police, or produce so many votes on election 
9 m 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



day, for the privilege of keeping a side-door 
open, had been allowed to do so, while those 
who were too decent or too poor were either 
compelled to close or brought under the heavy 
hand of the law. 

There was no uncertain ring about the 
course he took in breaking up this condition of 
things. It startled the machine politicians of 
his own party, who charged to it and to his 
general attitude toward the enforcement of the 
liquor laws the success of Tammany Hall in 
the fall elections that year. It is all very well 
to say, as they have said repeatedly, that such a 
reform as he instituted does no good in a city- 
like New York, which, as soon as it passes un- 
der another rule, slips back into its old course 
as if there had never been any interruption; but 
every thinking man knows that such reasoning 
is false. New York's police system has never 
got back to where it was before Mr. Roosevelt 
took hold of its administration. Till then good 
citizens had been beguiled with the plea that 
enforcement of the liquor laws was an impos- 
sibility; he showed that it was not. He did 
not set up a perfect reform mechanism, one 
which would run itself; but he proved that cer- 
tain limitations formerly accepted without ques- 

112 



TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN 



tion did not exist except in timid minds, and 
that all that was needed was a man at the helm 
with the strength and the nerve to disregard 
them and try for something better. Having 
demonstrated the fact that the liquor laws can 
be enforced a good deal more effectually than 
the laws against forgery or theft, Commissioner 
Roosevelt did leave his native city in better con- 
dition than he found it. He had at least set a 
pace which none of his successors can shirk on 
the ground of its impracticability. 

It will probably never be possible to recon- 
cile to the minds of many upright New York- 
ers the means adopted by the Police Board dur- 
ing this period, chiefly at the instance of Mr. 
Roosevelt, to obtain evidence against the saloon- 
keepers who made a practise of selling liquor 
to minors. Here was another case where the 
lesser good, in his judgment, had to give way 
to the larger. The traffic in strong drink among 
children had swelled to hideous proportions. 
The best estimates the board could obtain indi- 
cated that more than half the habitual drunk- 
ards who figured in the New York police courts 
had become such before they had reached the 
age at which they could lawfully buy intoxi- 
cants. Appalling crimes and catastrophes oc- 

JI 3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



curred continually which could be traced to 
the drunkenness of the child victims. 

A boy who was regularly sent to buy liquor 
for the operatives in the factory where he was 
employed acquired a taste for it himself, and, 
failing into a drunken stupor one day in an 
empty building, was eaten alive by rats. It was 
such horrible examples of the evil, together 
with the earnest pleas of good men and women 
who labored among the poor in the slums, that 
settled in Mr. Roosevelt's mind the purpose to 
root out the abuse by any device within his 
reach, however liable to misconstruction. Of 
course, the only way to do this was to capture 
the miscreants who habitually sold liquor to 
children and send them to prison, till enough 
had been punished to terrorize any other bar- 
keepers who were liable to commit the same 
crime. Equally of course, an adult could not 
procure the necessary evidence unaided, neither 
could a child whom a dram-seller did not know 
and whom he might therefore suspect of being 
a spy. The only means open was to take a child 
who had formerly purchased liquor at a certain 
place, send it again on the same errand, and 
make it furnish the proof required as the basis 
of a warrant for the dealer. 

114 



THE REAL QUESTION 



One of the police magistrates delivered a 
severe lecture from the bench in condemnation 
of this method of breaking up the traffic, on 
the ground that the statute forbidding the sale 
made it an offense for any one to be a party to 
it, and that the Police Board was violating the 
law as much as the liquor seller. Construing 
the law by its letter rather than its spirit, that 
may have been true; but the alternative pro- 
posed by this judge and other critics — that an 
officer in citizen's clothing could plant himself 
in the saloon, watch when the children came 
in for their liquor, and pounce upon the bar- 
keeper in the act of selling — was obviously im- 
practicable, and founded upon a false impres- 
sion of the way such sales were conducted. 
The practise of the offending saloons was to 
admit child customers one by one into a narrow 
hallway, where they were out of sight of the 
ordinary patrons; this rendered it out of the 
question for any but a child who actually 
bought liquor to bring its seller to justice. The 
means which had to be employed was deplora- 
ble; but the question of morals to be settled was 
not whether it was right in itself to send a child 
after liquor, but whether it was better to do this 
a few times than to let the traffic go on indefi- 

ii5 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



nitely, as it had been going on for years in spite 
of all the legislation that could be invented for 
its suppression. 

When he was Civil-Service Commissioner 
Mr. Roosevelt often had occasion to call into 
play his faculty for discriminating between the 
larger and the lesser good. One day a Wash- 
ington newspaper published a series of sensa- 
tional charges against the commission, alleging 
among other things that Mr. Roosevelt had 
shown himself as bad a spoilsman as any of the 
objects of his criticism, having gone place-hunt- 
ing for a man whom he knew to be a rogue. "I 
demand an investigation," was the commis- 
sioner's prompt response, and he repeated it till 
he got what he wanted. The whole commis- 
sion was under fire, as some of the charges were 
of the volley order. To recall all of these 
would make too long a story, but the one spe- 
cially aimed at Mr. Roosevelt concerned his 
conduct in investigating the affairs of the post- 
office at Milwaukee, where trickery and fraud 
of the worst sort had been practised in the ap- 
pointment of clerks without reference to the 
merit system. It did not take Mr. Roosevelt 
long, after entering on this inquiry, to discover 
that all the trails of guilt led right to the door 

116 



TELL THE TRUTH 



of one Shidy, a clerk and a member of the local 
Civil-Service Board who had access to the reg- 
ister of eligibles. He therefore induced Shidy 
to meet him for a confidential talk. For some 
time they had a fruitless sparring match of ques- 
tions and answers. The commissioner con- 
vinced himself that the man knew more than 
he dared to tell, and, after exhausting other 
means of getting at this, came down upon him 
with a flat demand for a statement. 

"You are a servant of the Government," said 
he, "and it is your duty to stand by the Govern- 
ment in its attempt to procure essential evi- 
dence. I want nothing but the truth, but I 
want every word of that." 

"I am in ill health and poor," was Shidy's 
answer, "and I can not afford to lose my place 
in the post-office, as I certainly shall if I un- 
bosom myself." 

"I will take care of that," replied Mr. 
Roosevelt. "You shall not be punished for tell- 
ing the truth. Trust me to see that the Gov- 
ernment does its duty by you, if you do your 
duty by the Government." 

The result of this colloquy was a complete 
confession by Shidy of a most appalling series 
of frauds practised upon the local civil-service 

117 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



system. The eligible registers had been "pad- 
ded" with names which had no business there; 
the order of standing of candidates after ex- 
amination had been altered so as to get this man 
into the service and bar that man out; and so 
forth. The worst of the whole matter was that 
Shidy unblushingly described just how he did 
these things himself. He professed to have 
done them at the instigation of the postmas- 
ter; but the actual work of padding and shift- 
ing had been performed by his own hands, 
with the collusive knowledge of certain other 
parties. 

The young commissioner, who had hardly 
expected such a revelation when he promised 
immunity to the witness, stood by his word, dis- 
agreeable as it was to do so; and when Shidy, 
after paving the way for the postmaster's re- 
moval, was himself dismissed from office, Mr. 
Roosevelt tried hard to have him reinstated. 
Failing in this, he went to Superintendent Por- 
ter of the Census Office, and with the aid of his 
colleague, Mr. Thompson, procured a clerkship 
there for his protege. 

When the framework of this episode came 
out at the congressional investigation, Mr. 
Roosevelt's enemies believed that they had got 

118 



STANDING BY HIS RECORD 

him into a corner and that he would have to 
find some shuffling excuse for lending himself 
to a scheme to keep such a scamp in the Gov- 
ernment's employ with a full knowledge of his 
guilt. On the contrary, the commissioner went 
upon the stand and freely told the whole story 
from beginning to end. He defended his 
course by saying that, without direct testimony, 
any investigation by the commission would be 
a waste of time; the only way to get the neces- 
sary evidence in this instance was to promise 
that a wrongdoer who knew the truth should 
not suffer for telling it; and however repugnant 
it might be to him personally to carry out such 
a pledge after ascertaining all the facts, he felt 
that it was his duty to the Government to do so. 
It was a case where the larger good overshad- 
owed the lesser, and he was prepared to stand 
by his record. 

So impressed was the congressional com- 
mittee with the candor and boldness of his atti- 
tude, that it declared in its report that the con- 
duct of Messrs. Roosevelt and Thompson was 
not exceptional, nor did it "tend to the demoral- 
ization of the service. It would have been 
ground for criticism if, instead of keeping faith 
with the witness, they had permitted those who 

119 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



concealed the truth to escape and retain their 
positions, and had suffered Shidy, who had been 
instrumental in exposing the fraud and bring- 
ing the truth to light, to be punished for so 
doing." 



1 20 



CHAPTER VIII 

OUR BOSS SYSTEM AND MR. PLATT 

Overgrowth of Senate influence — A middle course — Typical cases 
— How bad selections are foisted on a President — New York 
custom-house changes — The Immigration Service controversy 
— A clean sweep. 

When Theodore Roosevelt became Presi- 
dent there was a loud cry of joy among the 
civil-service reformers who had mourned the 
growing dominance of senatorial "bosses" in 
the matter of appointments. The day of boss- 
ism was ended, they exclaimed, for at last we 
had a man in the White House who would fight 
the Senate. They forgot, perhaps, that such an 
experiment cost President Johnson an impeach- 
ment trial; that it cost Grant the loss of more 
than one Cabinet adviser; that it cost Garfield 
his life. Cleveland fought the most powerful 
of the Democratic Senators till his party went 
to pieces, though he was always morally right 
and the Senators wrong in the matters over 
which they quarreled. Roosevelt cherishes an 

121 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



almost morbid horror of doing anything to split 
his party. His theory of "the larger good" is 
dominant in that feeling as elsewhere. 

Hence he has been trying to take a middle 
course between the two extremes of subjection 
and defiance. He has received the Senators 
on an even footing, but not strictly on terms of 
equality; for, while willing to have their ad- 
vice and to recognize their right to proffer it, 
he has by no means bound himself to accept it. 
He has kept steadily before his own eyes and 
theirs the fact that the Constitution vests in him, 
and in him alone, both the power and the re- 
sponsibility of appointment. To the mind of 
an enthusiast this seems a subtle distinction; to 
one that comes daily into contact with the ma- 
chinery of politics and statecraft it is entirely 
comprehensible. Ideally, the only policy for 
a high-minded President to pursue is to de- 
mand perfection in his appointees and refuse 
to be moved till he gets it; practically, this is 
out of the question. In the first place, human 
perfection does not exist. In the second place, 
the Archangel Gabriel could not get the post- 
office at Pottstown if the two Senators from his 
State should oppose confirmation; for by the 
unwritten rule of senatorial courtesy all the 

122 



A MIDDLE COURSE 



other Senators would stand by these two. This 
might seriously embarrass matters in the Gov- 
ernment, especially if the personage whom he 
was to replace happened to be Beelzebub or 
Apollyon. The President might stand on his 
rights to the end of his term, but somebody 
would have to run the office he was trying to 
fill; and that somebody must either be an un- 
derling — in which case the efficiency of its ad- 
ministration would be doubtful — or its hold- 
over chief, with an excellent chance that its 
administration would be bad. 

Here is a sorry range of choice, but it is 
one with which a President is not infrequently 
faced. Mr. Roosevelt, who lacks by nature the 
peculiar kind of tact which smoothed so com- 
fortably the relations of President McKinley 
with Congress, adopted at the outset a policy of 
candor with the Republican Senators who 
called to advise him, informing them that in 
matters of patronage he intended 

(i) To consult them in advance as to selec- 
tions from their several States; 

(2) To make his own selections, never- 
theless, and be responsible to the people for 
these; 

(3) To hold Senators answerable to him 

123 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



for the consequences where he accepted their 
advice, and to resent suitably any imposition on 
his confidence; 

(4) To require every subordinate of his 
administration to show a proper respect for the 
senatorial office, no matter who filled it. 

Some foreshadowing of this program had 
been given by his administration as Governor 
of New York. Before asking for the suffrages 
of the people for that office, he had taken pains 
to announce, so conspicuously that none should 
have an excuse for not knowing, his purpose 
to consult on all important undertakings with 
the recognized head of the Republican party 
in the State. If the people had understood his 
announcement to mean that, in voting for 
Roosevelt by name, they were voting for Sen- 
ator Piatt as the actual Governor of New York, 
there is little doubt that Roosevelt would have 
been defeated. As it was, it unquestionably 
cost the candidate some votes, for which his only 
compensation was the sense that he had dealt 
squarely with the people and not allowed them 
to cast their ballots under any misapprehension 
of his position. 

He shocked many of his admirers later by 
breakfasting with Piatt. I never exactly un- 

124 



CONSULTING THE BOSS 



derstood why he wished to, unless it were to 
save time when they had something to talk over, 
for they are hardly to be rated as companion 
spirits socially; but neither could I understand 
why there should have been a commotion 
over the fact, any more than if he had invited 
"Ben" Tillman to dine privately at the White 
House or accepted the hospitalities of the Wild 
Man of Borneo. The atmosphere in which one 
takes one's physical sustenance does not neces- 
sarily affect one's morals or manners. "Not 
that which goeth into the mouth defileth a 
man," says the Good Book; and if one's diges- 
tion is all. right and the communications at table 
do not influence unfavorably one's later con- 
duct, I do not see where any great damage is 
done by observing the common amenities. 

When it came to the business of the State, 
neither the preelection announcement nor the 
postelection breakfast appears to have put Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt at a serious disadvantage. The 
Piatt machine wanted to name Francis Hen- 
dricks for superintendent of public works; the 
Governor said: "No. He will fit some other 
place very well, but not that one. We must 
command unreserved public confidence for our 
rehabilitation of the State canal system. Mr. 

125 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Hendricks comes from a neighborhood which 
was the center of activities of the old canal ring. 
However excellent his administration might be, 
a multitude of people would be prejudiced 
against it from the start." 

So he began his hunt for a practical en- 
gineer. I happen to know that he tried to get 
General Francis V. Greene, but could not. 
Whom else he invited I can not say positively. 
The task offered might well have appalled a 
man with keen sensibilities, for it meant a thor- 
ough cleaning up of the old regime before inau- 
gurating the new. Finally he settled upon 
Colonel John N. Partridge, of Brooklyn, who, 
if not the ideal man for the place, was probably 
the best available. The Senator gave a hesita- 
ting consent to the appointment, and then it was 
formally announced in the newspapers as made 
at his instance. The Governor entered no pro- 
test; that was part of the game. 

"Lou" Payn, long a power in New York 
Republican politics and a permanent stand-by 
of Piatt's, was superintendent of insurance. The 
Governor had no fancy for an office-holder 
of just Payn's antecedents, and felt satisfied that 
it was the part of wisdom as well as righteous- 
ness to get rid of him. He accordingly called 

126 



FILLING STATE OFFICES 



the boss into consultation. The boss thought it 
would be a mistake to dismiss Payn. 

"That isn't the point," was the Governor's 
answer; "what I want to find out is who is the 
best man I can get to succeed him." 

If this didn't end the talk about Payn's re- 
tention, Mr. Piatt knew that the next sentence 
surely would, so he did not press the subject 
further. Between them they canvassed several 
names. Some suggested by the Governor were 
dropped when the boss assured him that they 
could not pass the Senate; some suggested by 
the boss were dropped because the Governor 
would not stand for them. Presently it was de- 
cided that if the State machine regarded Fran- 
cis Hendricks as good enough for one superin- 
tendency it ought to think him good enough 
for another; and if the only reason the Gov- 
ernor had shied at him before was because of 
the public's nervousness over the canal question, 
there was no such obstacle in the way of his 
appointment to the Insurance Department. So 
in went Hendricks's name to the Senate, and 
was duly gazetted to the world as "presented 
by Senator Piatt." Here again the Governor 
got "not the best, but the best he could." 

Such relations, to paraphrase his own say- 
10 127 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ing, may not be the pleasantest, but they are the 
pleasantest a chief executive can hope for un- 
der the existing system of divided control in 
matters of patronage. Moreover, the bosses are 
not alone to blame for the non-independence of 
the executive. Take the comparatively recent 
case of the assistant treasurership at New York 
city as an example. There was a great deal of 
adverse comment on the appointment of Will- 
iam Plimley to this office, especially when the 
fact came out — and it was a fact this time — 
that Plimley was Piatt's own choice and that 
the President knew nothing of him till the Sen- 
ator proposed his name. How, cried the com- 
mentators, could a President allow himself thus 
to be led by the nose, especially with respect 
to an office so identified with the financial wel- 
fare of the Government! 

Most of the persons who found fault with 
Plimley's nomination were presumptively igno- 
rant of the efforts the President had made to 
get somebody whom he did know to take the 
office. It is safe to say that not a word of ad- 
verse criticism would have been passed upon 
the nomination of George R. Sheldon or of 
Robert Bacon; yet both these gentlemen were 
selected and invited, but declined to serve. 

128 



A LAST RESORT 



Meanwhile our most important Subtreasury 
was suffering for lack of a head. Every day 
was increasing the inconvenience of the situa- 
tion. The President was in a corner. Mr. 
Piatt came forward with the suggestion of a 
name. It was strange to the President's ears, 
but he was willing to take the Senator's word 
for Plimley's character and ability, especially 
when it was backed by letters from a former 
member of President McKinley's Cabinet and 
other eminent men. 

The commercial world in New York had 
made no suggestions, though its interests were 
more involved than any others in the choice of a 
model assistant treasurer. Plimley was there- 
fore accepted by default, as it were. When the 
best citizens of any community can suspend 
their busy self-seeking long enough to counsel 
their chief magistrate themselves, and when 
men of standing are public-spirited enough to 
take office as a duty, we shall witness fewer 
Plimley fiascos and hear less about the evils of 
boss dictation. 

During his term as Governor Mr. Roose- 
velt had always within reach one or more 
men who belonged politically to the same 
class with himself, and consulted with them 

129 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



as an antidote to his consultations with the 
machine. Elihu Root and Seth Low were 
both present at the council of Republicans he 
called in 1898 to consider the policy of the 
newly elected State administration. With Mr. 
Root he kept in close touch through the first 
stages of his governorship, and then Mr. Root 
went to Washington to become Secretary of 
War. The renewal of their relations in Wash- 
ington two years later led them back, after a 
little, to the same intimate footing, the Secre- 
tary becoming the President's most valued ad- 
viser on general subjects and having quite as 
much to say as Mr. Piatt about the distribu- 
tion of New York patronage. 

The greatest clash between Messrs. Piatt 
and Roosevelt after the latter became Presi- 
dent occurred over that perennial source of fac- 
tional controversy, the New York custom-house. 
George R. Bidwell, the Collector, was an organ- 
ization man who had crossed swords with Mr. 
Roosevelt in the old times; he was a stanch 
supporter of Senator Piatt. Wilbur F. Wake- 
man, the Appraiser, belonged to the "McKinley 
Republican" contingent of 1896 who stood out 
at the St. Louis Convention against the Piatt 
machine. Bidwell, although having a strong 

130 



NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE 



champion in Secretary Gage, did not enjoy 
President Roosevelt's confidence; Wakeman 
had made himself obnoxious to a large and 
influential element among the New York im- 
porters by overzeal, and to the Secretary and 
Senator Piatt by talking too freely to the news- 
papers. The two customs officers were fre- 
quently at odds with each other. The Presi- 
dent announced to the Senator one day that 
he had decided to let Bidwell go. Mr. Piatt 
insisted on his retention. The President was 
firm; the only concession he would make was 
to consider the Senator's advice as to the choice 
of a new collector. The Senator could not see 
why Bidwell should go and Wakeman be re- 
tained. The President answered that the wel- 
fare of the service would probably be promoted 
by a general clearing out, and that he should 
drop both men. Then they proceeded to can- 
vass names fdr the collectorship. 

It was the old story of propose and reject, 
propose and reject, first on one side and then 
on the other. Finally the President named 
Nevada N. Stranahan, a member of the New 
York Legislature and a loyal organization man, 
but one who had stood by him well during his 
administration at Albany, showing intelligence, 

131 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



personal honesty and public spirit. As a 
friend remarked on hearing who had been 
chosen, Mr. Stranahan was a man who would 
side with the President and against Mr. Piatt 
every time an issue was fairly drawn between 
right and wrong and the President was in the 
right; when there was no such issue, but merely 
a question of tactical expediency, he would 
probably side with the Senator against the 
President. This was a condition with which 
the President was not disposed to quarrel, and 
when the Senator gave a reluctant consent to 
the change he was authorized to convey the 
President's formal invitation to Mr. Stranahan. 
The appraisership was filled soon afterward by 
a promotion within the service; George W. 
Whitehead, who had made a good record as an 
appraiser in Porto Rico, was called to New 
York. Both the appointees have given satis- 
faction, and matters have run very smoothly at 
the custom-house since their installation. 

Two more changes at New York caused a 
little friction between the President and the 
Senator in passing. One was the appointment 
of James S. Clarkson as surveyor of the port. 
Clarkson was a politician of the old school, a 
former editor in Iowa, a member of a well- 

132 



OTHER DIFFERENCES 



known family of abolitionists, and a stalwart 
supporter of the reconstruction policy of Con- 
gress in the Southern States. The news that 
he was to be appointed caused an equal com- 
motion among the civil-service reformers and 
in the Piatt camp. Clarkson had disposed of 
his Western interests some years before and re- 
moved to New York, but had not become identi- 
fied with the party organization in his new 
home; hence the protest of the machine. He 
had always been a rank opponent of the merit 
system, and Mr. Roosevelt had once, as de- 
scribed in another chapter, been moved to ad- 
minister to him publicly a stinging rebuke for 
his spoils proclivities; hence the amazement of 
the reformers. 

Clarkson, on account of his relations to the 
race question, had a large acquaintance among 
the negroes of the South. The theory was 
therefore advanced by the political prophets 
that the President intended making him the in- 
strument of building up a "Roosevelt machine" 
among the negroes, in opposition to the machine 
which Mr. Hanna was believed to control. 
Those who know best the general policy of Mr. 
Roosevelt pay no attention to stories of his de- 
sire for a personal machine of any sort. But 

*33 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



it is fair to assume that Mr. Clarkson's famil- 
iarity with the negroes may be made useful in 
counteracting the falsehood set afloat among 
the ignorant blacks, that the President is desert- 
ing them in their hour of trial because he has 
refused to force negro appointees upon unwill- 
ing white communities without regard to char- 
acter or fitness for official responsibility. 

The other notable disagreement occurred 
over the reorganization of the immigration 
office in New York. The commissioner in 
charge of the station at Ellis Island, through 
which most of the poor and ignorant aliens 
come into the country, was Thomas Fitchie. 
No charges of misconduct had been filed against 
him, but conditions at the station were far from 
satisfactory, and the President did not regard 
him as a sufficiently energetic and aggressive 
man to carry through the reforms which it was 
plain would be needed soon. His deputy, Ed- 
ward F. McSweeney, had been in office a long 
time and was the real chief executive. Mc- 
Sweeney was entrenched very securely in the 
good-will of the steamship companies and of 
the local missionaries. But he had got into a 
wrangle with the Commissioner-General of Im- 
migration, Terence V. Powderly; criminations 

134 



IMMIGRATION SERVICE 



and recriminations were flying back and forth, 
and the Ellis Island station and the bureau in 
Washington were pulling so constantly in op- 
posite directions that the service was becoming 
demoralized. 

The President resolved to apply his favorite 
panacea for such difficulties, a clean sweep. 
Powderly appealed to Quay, and Quay to the 
President. Meanwhile the friends of Fitchie 
and McSweeney, including not only Mr. Piatt 
but Mr. Lodge and some of the other Senators 
who were most intimate personally with Mr. 
Roosevelt, were aroused in his behalf. The 
air fairly shook with the din of battle. The 
President, however, refused to be moved from 
the position he had taken. He had compara- 
tively little difficulty in dealing with the Wash- 
ington end of the complication, for the labor 
organizations, in whose interest Powderly had 
been appointed, were well satisfied with the 
choice of Frank P. Sargent, chief of the Broth- 
erhood of Railway Firemen, to succeed him; 
but at the New York end there was serious 
trouble in finding just the man required to take 
charge of the station. The work there was 
bound to be disagreeable if faithfully per- 
formed; resourcefulness, tact, humanity, pa- 

135 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tience, were as essential as honesty, and the com- 
pensation was pitifully small. The President 
went over nearly the entire list of his per- 
sonal friends who possessed the necessary traits 
combined with an independent income, but 
he could find none whose patriotic altruism 
seemed equal to the test. 

At last an acquaintance who had been called 
to aid in the search suggested the name of Will- 
iam Williams, a lawyer of good repute, young 
enough to adapt himself to the task, and with 
the grit to undertake a public service in which 
the duties were hard and the rewards few and 
uncertain. He was appointed commissioner, 
and the President's old friend Joseph E. Mur- 
ray, who had been employed at the station once 
before, was installed as deputy. The former 
system, under which the chief of the office was 
the nominal and his assistant the active admin- 
istrator, was reversed, and a place which had 
been a political snug harbor was swept, gar- 
nished, and set in running order on a strict 
merit basis. 



136 



CHAPTER IX 

SOME OF THE OTHER BOSSES 

State dictators in the Senate— Quay and his machine— The typical 
case of McClain and McCoach— Cold comfort for warring 
bosses— Addicksism, Byrne, and Miss Todd. 

The Republican bosses in the United States 
Senate, as we see their names paraded in the 
newspapers, are Piatt of New York, Quay of 
Pennsylvania, Hanna of Ohio, Burton of 
Kansas, and a handful of lesser dignitaries. 
Hanna's bossism is held somewhat in check by 
the opposition of his colleague, Senator Foraker, 
and by the paramount boss-ship of the "King 
of Cincinnati," George B. Cox. Burton is com- 
paratively little known in the East. Piatt and 
Quay are the pair who challenge most atten- 
tion from the average opponent of bossism on 
principle. He never can understand how a 
virtuous President can maintain any relations, 
personal or otherwise, with such men. On the 
other hand, the President feels that if his critics 
could stand in his place for a while and get a 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



view of the whole situation instead of a sin- 
gle part they would be less severe in their 
judgments. 

The Quay machine in Pennsylvania was 
disagreeably in evidence during the early part 
of the Roosevelt administration, to the con- 
sternation of the anti-Quay Republicans and 
Independents. William H. Hicks, postmaster 
of Philadelphia, against whom the Civil- 
Service Commission had reported to President 
McKinley after an investigation of charges 
preferred through the agency of some of Mr. 
Quay's lieutenants, was dropped from his office. 
The same sort of negotiation was opened with 
Senators Quay and Penrose as we have seen 
conducted with Mr. Piatt. The Senators were 
informed that the President had no disposition 
to quarrel with them, and that he would name 
a postmaster acceptable to them if they would 
settle upon a man who was unexceptionable 
personally. After some beating of the bushes, 
their choice finally fell upon Clayton Mc- 
Michael, a member of a highly respectable 
Philadelphia family, but one always associated 
in public affairs with the organization now 
controlled by Quay. Internal Revenue Col- 
lector McClain gave way in like manner to one 

138 



McCLAIN AND McCOACH 



of Quay's most consistent and serviceable fol- 
lowers, William McCoach. 

The Pennsylvania reformers generally were 
willing to ignore the McMichael appointment 
in view of the attitude of the Civil-Service 
Commission toward Hicks, but against the 
change from McClain to McCoach they re- 
volted, McCoach having won their hostility by 
his career as one of the city fathers of Philadel- 
phia. The version of the incident which found 
its way into the press was that the President 
had notified McClain, whose first four years 
were about expiring, that it would not be worth 
while to renew his official bond, as McCoach 
had been promised the collectorship— all be- 
cause McClain had bolted the regular Repub- 
lican ticket at the late municipal election, and 
the Administration intended to "send bolters to 
the rear and keep none but stanch party men in 
office thereafter!" 

The absurdity of such a statement of the 
attitude of a man who has all his life insisted 
on the divorce of municipal from national poli- 
tics hardly calls for serious comment; but jus- 
tice demands that the truth have at least an 
equal showing with the falsehood. The first 
time this question arose during his term Presi- 

139 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



dent Roosevelt explained to his Cabinet very 
clearly his opinion as to the part Federal office- 
holders should play in politics. They might 
vote just as they pleased, and they were not ex- 
pected to keep their minds a blank, or sit by 
like mumchances while other men were tem- 
perately discussing questions of policy about 
which the national parties differed ; but as serv- 
ants of the whole people they were expected to 
be civil even to their adversaries, to do noth- 
ing which could be a cause of offense to the 
feelings of others, and in no way to obtrude 
their views where this would be indecorous. 
Above all, the rule was laid down that where 
a factional fight was going on within the Re- 
publican party, not one of these men must do 
anything to embroil the Administration with 
the Senators and Representatives with whom 
it must live and do business for four years. 

Presently came along the municipal strug- 
gle in Philadelphia. Simultaneously there was 
one in the President's home city, New York. 
The President kept his hands severely off both. 
Seth Low, who was making the campaign for 
mayor in New York, was his old and valued 
friend, and doubtless a hunt through Mr. Low's 
private letter-files would show whether or not 

140 



OFFICE-HOLDERS IN POLITICS 



Mr. Roosevelt, as a New Yorker, felt an in- 
terest in the fusion movement; but the pub- 
lic press and records might be searched in 
vain for a proof either pro or con. The luxury 
of participation which the President denied to 
himself and his Secretary of War in New 
York, was the measure of his restriction upon 
his subordinates in the Federal service in Phila- 
delphia—even upon Postmaster-General Smith, 
a Philadelphian; and any one who knows how 
keenly Mr. Roosevelt enjoys what he calls a 
"brush" now and then must appreciate the ex- 
tent of this self-sacrifice. 

An officer of the postal service in Philadel- 
phia who wished to go upon the stump in cham- 
pionship of the Quay machine's municipal 
ticket, took the precaution to ask the Postmas- 
ter-General's permission to do so. Mr. Smith 
answered that he must not; that he was at lib- 
erty to cast any ballot he preferred, but he 
must keep out of the public fight. McClain 
also consulted Mr. Smith, as a Philadelphian 
and an anti-Quay Republican, as to whether he 
had better take part against the machine ticket. 
The Postmaster-General advised him strongly 
in the negative, saying that he should himself 
abstain, for motives of decorum, from active 

141 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



participation, though he should vote according 
to his conscience, and that every other Federal 
office-holder would be protected in the enjoy- 
ment of the same privilege. McClain thought 
the matter over, decided to have a slash at the 
organization with which he had regularly 
trained till they quarreled, and entered the cam- 
paign. The machine was victorious. When 
the time came to consider whether McClain 
should continue in office, Quay and his col- 
league put in a protest. McClain, they in- 
sisted, had gone out of his way to make himself 
offensive to them; the President, under the rule 
he had himself laid down to govern such cases, 
seemed to have but one thing left to do. Of 
course, McClain claimed to have been ill- 
treated. But he had been warned that one who 
draws the sword must not whimper if marked 
to perish by the sword; he had seen fit to ignore 
the warning, and by parity of reasoning the 
President disregarded the whimper. 

Who should take McClain's place? The 
Senators named a man. The President, who 
knew their candidate by reputation, dismissed 
the suggestion as not worth considering. Then 
McCoach was put forward. The President 
did not know him, so he allowed the name to 

142 



COLLEAGUES AT ODDS 



slip into the newspapers and waited some days 
to watch the effect; but no charges were filed 
against the proposed appointee, beyond a ref- 
erence to the fact that he had long been a friend 
of Quay's. This, however unfavorably it 
might affect a private mind, could hardly be 
put down as a public offense, for it would dis- 
qualify two-thirds of the United States Senate. 
Still, on general principles and without con- 
senting to promise anything, the President re- 
quired Quay and Penrose to bring him certifi- 
cates of character for McCoach from prom- 
inent Philadelphians. The testimonials were 
soon forthcoming, bearing signatures of judges 
and business men, and McCoach's commission 
went to him by an early mail. 

Once in a while the President gets tired of 
the bosses, whom, like the poor, he has always 
with him. It is bad enough when the Senators 
from a State agree in their recommendations, 
and he has to make himself accountable to the 
people of the country for the appointment of 
some man whom he has never seen, on the say-so 
of two other men whom he wishes he need not 
see so often. But when these two disagree in 
opinion and fall out personally, and run to him 
with their several grievances and backbitings, 

11 H3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



his sarcasm is apt to come into play. One day 
a brace of such antagonists, whom I shall des- 
ignate as A and B , came into his ante- 
room and waited for him through a very long 
and tedious hour. When he appeared they 
rose and greeted him simultaneously. As their 
quarrel had reached a stage where they were 
scarcely on speaking terms, they had taken 
seats on opposite sides of the room. He looked 
quizzically from one to the other, as if trying 
to recall something. Then he addressed Sen- 
ator A : 

"You have come to see me about that post- 
office?" 

"Yes, Mr. President," answered the Senator. 

"You still want Thompson appointed?" 

"I do." 

"Don't you know that Senator B ," ges- 
turing with his thumb over his shoulder at 
A 's hostile colleague, "says that Thomp- 
son ought to be in the penitentiary, and that he 
can produce the facts to prove it?" 

"I know that, Mr. President; and I have 
here the evidence to show that Jones, whom my 
colleague is supporting, ought to be in the peni- 
tentiary. We might as well drop the peniten- 
tiary question." 

144 



A HAPPY SOLUTION 



"Oh, dear, no— bless you, no!" cried the 
President, his face illuminated with its first 
gleam of pleasure since the interview began; 
"you have only just opened it. See here,' 

B >" calling up the other Senator, "A 

says he has proof enough to lock up your friend 
Jones, and you say you have proof enough to 
lock up his friend Thompson. Now, we can 
settle this post-office fight in short order. If 
both of you will turn your papers over to the 
Attorney-General, we'll leave him to decide 
whether Thompson or Jones shall be prose- 
cuted. If either man can manage to keep out 
of prison when Knox gets after him he must 
be a pretty good citizen, and I promise to give 
him the post-office. How is that?" 

But now and then I have heard him say of 
a boss, "On the whole, I've come rather to like 
him"; or, "He's not such a bad fellow, I find, 
after you have cracked his shell"; or of some 
special act of a boss, "That was pretty square, 
when you remember where it came from." For,' 
to give the devil his due, even this class of 
gentry have their— moments. The present 
writer has fought against bosses and bossism for 
one-third of a century, yet he is bound in truth 
to say that his experience has at times known 

H5 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



some pleasant surprises. It was the late Daniel 
Manning, denominated by the Republican 
orators of his period "that prince royal of 
spoilsmen," who tried to get Alexander Agassiz 
for superintendent of the United States Coast 
Survey. It was Senator Gorman who urged 
most assiduously the appointment of Oscar S. 
Straus as minister to Turkey. It was "Tom" 
Piatt who stood out longest, single-handed, 
against the choice of a certain New York man 
for the Cabinet, objecting to him because he 
was a flatulent humbug although a notorious 
idolizer of Senators. I once knew "Matt" 
Quay to crawl out of a sick-bed and go in search 
of the Secretary of the Interior to prevent an 
appointment which would hurt the Indians, 
although he did not know the proposed ap- 
pointee, had nothing against him personally, 
and was in no way concerned with the office or 
the rival candidates. Again and again I have 
seen appeals made with success to the good in- 
stincts of bosses in Congress, and their advocacy 
of a worthy measure procured even against 
what appeared to be their selfish interests. I 
have known this to happen after vain efforts 
had been made to arouse some of the "unco 
guid" from their timid sluggishness. Polit- 

146 



DELAWARE POLITICS 



ical virtue and personal force are not always 
wedded; neither, by the same token, are con- 
scienceless politics and humane impulse always 
divorced. A President often has more need 
to guard against a Senator's pity for some 
ineffective creature financially stranded than 
against having a corrupt man forced upon 
him. 

While the popular protest has been chiefly 
directed against the influence of the senatorial 
bosses, one boss who has never worn the toga, 
but has spent a lifetime chasing it, has given 
the President more trouble than all the others 
put together. This is J. Edward Addicks of 
Delaware. He is reputed to be very rich, and 
enjoys a unique distinction as an object of 
attack by the entire reform element in American 
politics, who charge him with keeping control 
of the Republican organization of his State by 
a liberal use of money. Thanks to the bitter- 
ness of the feeling against him among the op- 
posing faction, and to the fact that he had 
pressed his demand for a senatorship with such 
persistency, Delaware was for nearly four years 
without representation in the upper chamber 
of Congress; for the Legislature was steadily 
Republican, and, although he could not him- 

H7 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



self command votes enough to elect, he would 
not let any one else have an election. 

There being thus no Senators from Dela- 
ware to boss the patronage, Addicks has claimed 
the right to speak for the party as a Senator 
commonly would. He succeeded so far as to 
procure recognition for the delegates of his 
faction in the Republican national convention 
of 1900 — which made the faction "regular" — 
and he was able to show in 1902 that William 
M. Byrne, his candidate for Representative, 
running against another Republican nominated 
by the opposing faction, had rolled up a vote 
of nearly two to one. This was a demonstra- 
tion of his strength, though the split among the 
Republicans sent a Democrat to Congress. 

It was inconceivable to the bulk of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's friends all over the Union that 
with his antecedents as a political reformer he 
could maintain any relations whatever with 
Addicks or the Addicks following; and the 
prophecy was freely made that, when the time 
should come for a formal alignment, the Presi- 
dent would be found siding with the anti- 
Addicks Republicans. This view received 
some encouragement when, a vacancy occurring 
in the post-office at Wilmington, Mr. Roosevelt 

148 



THE BYRNE CASE 



appointed a member of the anti-Addicks fac- 
tion postmaster. But a few months later an 
event occurred which set the whole country 
agog, in the nomination of Byrne, already men- 
tioned, to be district attorney. 

The case had one peculiar feature. Byrne 
had formerly been district attorney by appoint- 
ment of President McKinley as an anti-Addicks 
man, but had gone over to the other faction in 
the midst of his term. Prior to this defection 
no one had raised any objection to him. He 
was ambitious to enter Congress, and Addicks 
consented to his having the "regular" nom- 
ination. President Roosevelt, though he had 
known Byrne for some years and liked him per- 
sonally, warned him that if he were going to 
become a candidate for Congress he must resign 
his attorneyship, as it would be unseemly for 
him, in view of the quarrel within the party in 
Delaware, to take the stump in his own behalf 
while holding such an office. 

Byrne resigned and made a spirited cam- 
paign. About that time the Washington Gov- 
ernment was bending all its energies to getting 
rid of the rule of the friars in the Philippine 
Islands. It was most anxious to impress good 
Catholics everywhere with the fact that it was 

149 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



waging no war of religious proscription, but 
trying rather to help the missionary efforts of 
their Church by weeding out a vicious system 
which had done more than anything else to pro- 
mote schism among the islanders. Byrne was 
a Catholic, and could talk to his fellow believ- 
ers as no Protestant could. He improved the 
opportunity offered by his electioneering activi- 
ties to explain and defend the Government's 
policy. This greatly pleased the President, 
who, when the campaign ended in his defeat, 
named him for restoration to his old place. 

The fact that he had become a supporter of 
Addicks and was nevertheless to be appointed 
to office excited all the uproar, and quite 
drowned out public consideration of any other 
circumstance in his career. Complaints of his 
neglect of his duties as district attorney under 
his former commission began to pour into 
Washington; the press rang with the incident 
for some weeks; resolutions denunciatory of the 
President were adopted by various reform bod- 
ies; and in every way the popular feeling about 
Addicks and Addicksism made itself manifest. 
In the midst of the turmoil, which broke out 
during the President's temporary absence from 
the capital, Postmaster-General Payne, known 

150 




THE GUN ROOM AT SAGAMORE HILL 



STICKING TO HIS MAN 



as the expert politician of the Cabinet, made 
the mistake of attempting to explain to the 
newspapers that the President was only treat- 
ing Addicks to the same recognition accord- 
ed to other heads of regular party organiza- 
tions. 

Far from acting as a palliative, this state- 
ment merely increased the excitement. Mr. 
Payne could not understand why it should. 
He had all his life been dealing with politicians 
on the cold business basis of so much recogni- 
tion for so many votes; and he was aware that 
Mr. Roosevelt, whether gratified or not by the 
figures, had been astonished at the magnitude 
of the Addicks following as revealed by the 
latest election returns, although nearly every 
sop of Federal patronage had been thrown to 
the minority faction on the bare ground that 
Addicks was Addicks. 

The President, on his return to the White 
House, lost no time in making it known that 
reasons entirely disconnected with Byrne's fac- 
tional affiliations would have moved him to 
make the reappointment in any event. As those 
reasons still remained potent in his mind, he 
did not change his purpose. As soon as Con- 
gress assembled he sent Byrne's name to the 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Senate. The Judiciary Committee voted to re- 
port the nomination adversely. A short extra 
session of the Senate followed, and in went 
Byrne's name again, but once more came ad- 
journment without confirmation. The Presi- 
dent persisted and made a recess appointment, 
writing at the same time a letter to the appointee 
which said among other things: "Keep clear of 
factional politics. Confine your attention to 
making the best record as district attorney that 
has been made by any district attorney of Dela- 
ware. Show neither fear nor favor in anything 
you do. I have liked you and I think well of 
you, but under the circumstances of your ap- 
pointment and the way in which it was fought, 
I have a right to demand that you walk even 
more guardedly than the ordinary public offi- 
cial walks, and that you show yourself a model 
officer in point of fearlessness and integrity, in- 
dustry and ability." 

Byrne retained his office only a few months 
and then resigned without making any pub- 
lication of his reasons. It is generally sup- 
posed that he was tired of the controversy 
aroused by his case, and did not care to carry 
it into the Senate again at the next session. 

The uproar over Addicks broke out once 
152 



1 



LOGIC OF THE TODD CASE 

more in the summer of 1903, when Postmaster- 
General Payne removed Miss Todd, the post- 
master at Greenwood, Del., because she was 
distasteful to Senator Allee. Mr. Allee was 
one of two Senators elected early in that year 
through a truce between the Republican fac- 
tions in the Legislature, each faction choos- 
ing a Senator and Allee being the choice of 
the Addicksites. The male members of Miss 
Todd's family were rather conspicuously identi- 
fied with the anti-Addicks element. 

Mr. Payne, in the same blundering way as 
before, began to issue "statements." He an- 
nounced first that Miss Todd was a perfectly 
satisfactory postmaster, but that the two Sen- 
ators from Delaware had arranged to divide 
the patronage between them on territorial lines, 
that this office fell within Mr. Allee's area, and 
that Mr. Allee had called for a new postmas- 
ter. When this brought down upon his head 
a storm of popular criticism he fell back upon 
another excuse, saying that Miss Todd had 
allowed her office to be used as a political head- 
quarters for the anti-Addicks factionists, to the 
damage of good discipline. She stoutly denied 
the charge, and the public at large sided with 
her, naturally assuming that the Postmaster- 

153 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



General would not have made two dissonant 
apologies for the same act if his conscience had 
been clear. 

Thus the matter stood when the attention 
of the President was called to it. He made 
some inquiries on his own account, and found 
two or three reputable witnesses who insisted 
that Miss Todd had shown disrespect to the 
Senator, while others of equal credibility stood 
ready to make oath that she had always be- 
haved with perfect decorum. Such an abso- 
lute conflict of testimony as this placed him 
in a most uncomfortable position. Had he 
been consulted before the Postmaster-General 
acted he would not have considered the case 
against Miss Todd strong enough to warrant 
her dismissal; as she was already out, however, 
and her place filled, he did not consider the 
evidence in her favor strong enough to demand 
her reinstatement. The whole effect of Mr. 
Payne's tactless performance was to bring un- 
necessary public censure upon the President. 
Cabinet officers have relieved the situation by 
resigning on less ground than this; Mr. Payne 
is not one of the resigning kind, and he still 
sticks to his place. But one result of the inci- 
dent has been that he has had his authority 

154 



THE NET RESULT 



questioned and will have to keep his fingers out 
of Delaware factional politics for the future. 

The President's patience is not limitless, and 
he hates fruitless quarrels. To Byrne's place 
he appointed John P. Nields, who had once 
served acceptably as district attorney ad in- 
terim and understood the duties of the office. 
Nields was a pronounced anti-Addicks man. 
There was a brisk set-to between the Senators 
as to the successorship before the President set- 
tled it, and he was disgusted to the point of 
vigorous protest at the substitution of two quar- 
relsome bosses for one who did not quarrel but 
was universally quarreled with. He read the 
two men a lecture on scandalizing his admin- 
istration before the country and keeping him 
continually in hot water. The upshot of the 
Byrne and Todd cases is that he will take the 
patronage of Delaware wholly into his own 
hands till the two factions can make up their 
differences, or till Addicks shall quit active 
politics and remove the most serious obstacle 
to the permanent supremacy of his party in the 
little State. 



155 



CHAPTER X 

THE SECOND-TERM IDEA 

The President's desire for reelection — Republican rivals who 
dropped out — The Hanna "boom" — Real loyalty appre- 
ciated — Cleveland, Gray, and the coal-strike arbitration. 

"I DO not believe in playing the hypocrite," 
Mr. Roosevelt wrote to a friend a few months 
ago. "Any strong man fit to be President 
would desire a renomination and reelection 
after his first term. Lincoln was President in 
so great a crisis that perhaps he neither could 
nor did feel any personal interest in his own 
reelection. I trust and believe that if the crisis 
were a serious one I should be incapable of 
considering my own well-being for a moment 
in such a contingency. But at present I should 
like to be elected President just precisely as 
John Quincy Adams, or McKinley, or Cleve- 
land, or John Adams, or Washington himself 
desired to be elected. It is pleasant to think 
that one's countrymen believe well of one. 
But I shall not do anything whatever to secure 

i 5 6 



THE ONE CONSIDERATION 

my nomination save to try to carry on the pub- 
lic business in such shape that decent citizens 
will believe I have shown wisdom, integrity 
and courage. If they believe this with suffi- 
cient emphasis to secure my nomination and 
election — and on no other terms can I, or would 
I, be willing to secure either — why, I shall be 
glad. If they do not I shall be sorry, but I 
shall not be very much cast down, because I 
shall feel that I have done the best that was in 
me, and that there is nothing I have yet done 
of which I have cause to be ashamed or which 
I have cause to regret; and that I can go out 
of office with the profound satisfaction of hav- 
ing accomplished a certain amount of work 
that was both beneficial and honorable for the 
country." 

Substantially the same idea he had expressed 
to others from the day he succeeded to the 
presidency. Yet the newspapers have never 
ceased figuring upon his relations with this and 
that party magnate; and every time he has 
stirred or opened his mouth they have specu- 
lated in all seriousness on the way his second- 
term aspirations would be affected thereby. 
Of course, his competitors would be from both 
the great parties: the Republicans would con- 

157 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



test the nomination with him, the Democrats 
the election. 

All the other Republicans who had been 
regarded as possible candidates up to 1901 
quitted the field, as Mr. Shaw did, when Presi- 
dent McKinley's death left Mr. Roosevelt heir 
to the executive chair. Marcus A. Hanna of 
Ohio was not one of them. He had never been 
counted among the presidential probabilities 
during President McKinley's lifetime, the ca- 
reers of these two national figures being so 
blended in the popular mind that it seemed 
almost as if Mr. Hanna were already enjoying 
his presidency through the proxy of his friend 

at any rate, that all his own ambitions were 

satisfied in the honors heaped upon the man 
he loved best. But with McKinley's fall the 
whole outlook was changed. Of all men, here 
was the one whom circumstances had most en- 
dowed with the capacity to carry out the dead 
President's designs. Roosevelt might try to, 
but Hanna surely could. Not a few political 
prophets, therefore, contemptuous enough in 
disposing of the potential candidacy of other 
notable Republicans, paused when they came 
to Hanna, and said: "Perhaps." 

Moreover, Mr. Hanna lent a color of like- 
158 



MR. HANNA'S ATTITUDE 

lihood to this suspicion by making no positive 
declarations to discredit it. True, when oc- 
casionally a newspaper reporter approached 
him on the subject of his receiving the nomina- 
tion for the presidency, he would shake his 
head and laugh at the suggestion as an absurd- 
ity; but these disclaimers were never taken so 
seriously as to prevent Republican party gath- 
erings now and then from cheering him as the 
next President of the United States; nor did 
he, when aware that resolutions were to be 
adopted making such use of his name, do any- 
thing to head them off. Open letters, inter- 
views and editorial paragraphs kept him con- 
stantly before the public in the character of a 
candidate to be reckoned with, and he gave no 
sign of irritation with their authors. It was 
plain that the political wire-pullers, as well as 
a large multitude of ingenuous citizens who 
knew not politics, regarded him as coquettish 
rather than hostile toward the idea. 

But no one who was well acquainted with 
Mr. Hanna's personality was deceived as to 
where he stood. He was not of the presiden- 
tial mold. The Senate suited his taste and his 
powers. He wanted a free hand. He hated 
infinitesimal worries. He lacked the patience 
12 I59 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



necessary to deal with all sorts of men at once 
as a master and a supplicant. He loved au- 
thority more than insignia. He would rather 
administer the affairs of a nation in the name 
of another than let others administer them in 
his name. Nature had marked him for a king- 
maker, not a king. 

Bearing these facts in mind, it will not be 
so difficult to understand how he could dis- 
courage the discussion of his candidacy by 
treating it as a joke, and yet permit his "boom" 
to survive when he could just as well crush it. 
There probably was never a moment when he 
felt the slightest temptation to enter the lists 
for the nomination, but neither was there a 
moment when he would have been willing to 
forego the power to award it to some one else. 
If Republican organizations anywhere saw fit 
to name him as their choice for President, why 
should he put obstacles in their way? He was 
entirely friendly to Roosevelt and looked to 
see him nominated; he would not accept the 
nomination himself if it were offered him, and 
he did not expect it to be offered; but to go 
into the convention with a large following at 
his back, and be able to prevent a bad mistake 
if it threatened, would be a great satisfaction. 

1 60 



LOYALTY APPRECIATED 



Politics he knew to be like fire, very un- 
certain; no one could foretell where it would 
break out next. Everything and everybody 
might be going Roosevelt's way to-day, yet to- 
morrow might witness a stampede toward an- 
other candidate or a general break-up. The 
wise politician, he reasoned, is he who never 
takes anything for granted, but provides him- 
self against all emergencies. 

The first case that brought the Roosevelt 
and Hanna "booms" into apparent collision 
was that of Judson W. Lyons, the Register of 
the Treasury appointed by President McKin- 
ley. As some of the published accounts of the 
incident have distorted it, I shall take a par- 
ticipant's liberty in setting it right. 

Lyons was a Georgia negro. He owed his 
appointment to Senator Hanna's influence. He 
had acquitted himself creditably in office, and 
was generally respected at the Treasury De- 
partment. As his four years of service were 
drawing to an end, a few gossips began to talk 
about his being dropped to make room for 
somebody else. His friend Booker T. Wash- 
ington was calling on him one day, when Lyons 
remarked, in the course of their conversation, 
that, although he should value reappointment,' 

161 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



he had not asked for it, and would not wish 
Mr. Roosevelt to act under any misapprehen- 
sion; that he admired Mr. Roosevelt very 
much, and would support him against every- 
body else except Mr. Hanna; but that Mr. 
Hanna, if a candidate for the presidency in 
1904, could command his allegiance against 
any man living. 

Mr. Washington, a day or two afterward, 
mentioned the matter to me. I obtained his 
permission to repeat the story to the President. 
Mr. Roosevelt listened with interest. His eyes 
snapped as, at the close of the recital, he 
reached for a memorandum card and wrote 
Lyons's name on it, remarking: "I like Lyons, 
and had expected to reappoint him, but this 
settles the matter. A man who is loyal to his 
friends, and who will be so frank, when his 
own fortunes are in the balance, as to be un- 
willing to profit through any misunderstand- 
ing of his position, has the stuff in him of 
which good public servants are made. I wish 
you would say to Lyons for me that I shall 
lose no time in putting his reappointment be- 
yond question." 

This is a fair sample of the basis of fact 
underlying half the stories which have been 

162 



OHIO'S INDORSEMENT 



set in circulation about Senator Hanna and 
President Roosevelt, almost from the day the 
latter took his oath of office. While the polit- 
ical quidnuncs were busiest inventing new the- 
ories of their relations, and debating whether 
Hanna could possibly upset Roosevelt's pro- 
gram and prevent his nomination, and whether 
Roosevelt could devise a way of side-tracking 
Hanna's schemes if he really addressed his 
mind to it, the two men were breakfasting to- 
gether once a week on corned-beef hash and 
griddle cakes, and talking over affairs in Con- 
gress and the country with as much composure 
as if such things as party conventions had never 
existed. 

But a day did come when they took oppo- 
site views of the next thing to be done, and the 
public was treated to a short, sharp skirmish 
of wits, in which most of the fighting and all 
the success were on one side. The President 
was traveling in the far West in the spring of 
1903. The Ohio Republican Convention was 
about to meet, and the contents of the platform 
were already under discussion. Senator Fora- 
ker favored the adoption of a plank approving 
Mr. Roosevelt's administration and pledging 
the State to his support in 1904. In Pennsyl- 

163 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



vania and Kansas this had already been done. 
Senator Hanna opposed such a measure in 
Ohio on the technical ground that the only 
convention which has a right to commit a State 
to any candidate for the presidency is the one 
called for the purpose of choosing delegates 
for the presidential convention and instructing 
them. As such a convention would not be held 
in Ohio till 1904, he argued that the action of 
a 1903 convention would be nugatory. A tele- 
gram to Mr. Roosevelt, practically leaving the 
question to him for settlement, drew forth the 
response, also by wire: "Those who favor my 
administration and nomination will indorse 
them, and those who do not will oppose 
them." 

This made the issue flat. It was supposed 
by many, and hoped by some, that Mr. Hanna 
would accept the challenge and fight the mat- 
ter out in the convention; but he did not. On 
the contrary, he simply shrugged his shoulders 
and let the plank go through unobstructed. 
The people who had been thirsting for a quar- 
rel said: "Oh, it's all fair on the surface; that's 
for political effect. But their personal friend- 
ship will never stand such a strain." Ten days 
later they saw the President dropping his regu- 

164 



DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES 

lar round of duties and speeding across the 
country to attend the wedding of Senator Han- 
na's daughter in Cleveland — a compliment al- 
most unique of its kind. It takes a good deal 
more than an honest opposition and plain 
speech to drag President Roosevelt into a snarl 
with a man he really likes, and he likes "Mark" 
Hanna. 

Toward possible Democratic candidates for 
the presidency Mr. Roosevelt's demeanor has 
been perfectly pleasant as long as they have 
met him on a fair footing. With Bryan he has 
naturally had little to do, as their paths have 
not crossed except during campaigns. With 
Gorman he has maintained a polite but armed 
truce ever since their clash in old times over 
civil-service reform, described on another page. 
Of Hill he once expressed his opinion in un- 
measured terms as "belonging to the type of 
so-called practical politicians who care nothing 
for principles but everything for votes," "the 
champion of the lawbreaker and the ally of the 
criminal," and the like. Messrs. Gorman and 
Hill are men of long memories. When Olney 
was Attorney-General, Roosevelt used to quar- 
rel with him officially in the morning over the 
construction- of the civil-service law, and play 

165 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tennis with him all the afternoon, keeping up 
the controversy between sets. 

With Judge Gray of Delaware and Grover 
Cleveland Mr. Roosevelt has always been on 
excellent terms. Cleveland was Governor 
while Roosevelt was in the New York Legis- 
lature, and they acquired a high respect for 
each other while working together on measures 
for civic reform. It is also worth noting that 
on one of the rare occasions when they dif- 
fered on non-political questions, Roosevelt 
made what was in some respects the most re- 
markable speech ever delivered in the Assem- 
bly. A bill was passed in 1884 to reduce the 
fare on the elevated railroads of New York 
city from ten cents, which was permissible 
under their charters and had been charged up 
to that time, to five cents. The Governor 
vetoed it on the ground of unconstitutional- 
ity, because it violated the State's implied con- 
tract on the strength of which the stockhold- 
ers had subscribed their money to build the 
roads. 

Of course, the veto was highly unpopular. 
The corporations were hated on general anti- 
monopoly principles, and also because they 
were under control of Jay Gould and his Wall 

166 



A NOTABLE SPEECH 



Street coparceners. Moreover, they had been 
so overbearing in their methods as to increase 
the hostility of their compulsory patrons. Mr. 
Roosevelt himself had fought them because he 
was convinced that they had debauched the 
courts in order to hold fast to certain unlawful 
privileges. When the five-cent-fare bill had 
first come up in the Assembly he had voted for 
it, and he was now looked to as the natural 
leader of the movement to repass it over the 
veto. To the astonishment of every one he an- 
nounced his intention to sustain the veto, and 
explained his position thus : 

"I have to say with shame that when I voted 
for this bill I did not act as I think I ought to 
have acted on the floor of this house. For the 
only time, I did at that time vote contrary to 
what I think to be honestly right. I have to 
confess that I weakly yielded, partly to a vin- 
dictive feeling toward the infernal thieves who 
have those railroads in charge and partly to 
the popular voice in New York. For the man- 
agers of the elevated railroads I have as little 
feeling as any man here, and if it were pos- 
sible I should be willing to pass a bill of 
attainder against Gould and all of his asso- 
ciates. I realize that they have done the most 

167 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



incalculable harm in this community, with 
their hired stock-jobbing newspaper, with their 
corruption of the judiciary, and with their cor- 
ruption of this house. It is not a question of 
doing right to them, for they are merely com- 
mon thieves. As to the resolution" — a petition 
handed in by the directors of the company — 
"signed by Gould and his son, I would pay 
more attention to a petition signed by Barney 
Aaron, Owney Geoghegan, and Billy McGlory 
than I would pay to that paper, because I re- 
gard these men as part of an infinitely danger- 
ous order — the wealthy criminal class." 

This speech, which a hundred prophets 
were ready to swear would be Mr. Roosevelt's 
valedictory in politics because of the popular 
antagonism it would excite against him, did 
just two things : it established the speaker more 
firmly in the confidence of his constituency, 
who discovered that they had a representative 
with courage enough to take an unpopular 
stand if he saw plainly that it was right, even 
at the cost of humiliating himself by an apol- 
ogy; and it gave to the politico-social vocabu- 
lary a new and striking phrase. "The wealthy 
criminal class" became a fixture in the lan- 
guage. It was quoted again and again when, 

1 68 



INGENIOUS FICTION 



two years later, its author made a campaign for 
mayor of New York city. He was defeated 
through the peculiar complications of a three- 
sided contest; but he carried with him the 
largest percentage of the whole vote cast for 
any Republican candidate for mayor who up 
to that time had made the fight with three 
tickets in the field. 

The mention of Gray recalls the coal-strike 
arbitration, over which he presided. That epi- 
sode has furnished a text for an exceptionally 
large number of perversions of history, but for 
none which surpasses in picturesque quality this 
widely copied newspaper skit: 

When he made up his list of the members 
of the commission for submission to the coal 
operators and to President Mitchell, President 
Roosevelt did not have the name of Judge Gray 
at the top. He had there the name of Grover 
Cleveland. Mr. Cleveland had been commu- 
nicated with and had consented to serve. The 
President was delighted with this selection for 
chairman. He believed the appearance of the 
former President at the head of the strike-set- 
tling body would command the respect and 
admiration of the American people. There- 
fore he was much surprised when one of his 
advisers suggested that the selection of Mr, 

169 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

Cleveland might be a political mistake. The 
President asked what he meant by that. 

"I mean," said the gentleman, "that Mr. 
Cleveland is a presidential possibility. If he 
serves at the head of this commission it will 
bring him very prominently before the public, 
and may end in making him the Democratic 
nominee in 1904." 

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the President. 

At that moment Secretary Root appeared, 
and the President asked him what he thought 
of it. Mr. Root stroked his chin during a 
few moments of meditation, and then replied, 
"I agree with the gentleman who has just 
spoken." 

Without another word President Roosevelt 
grabbed a lead-pencil and drew a line through 
the name of Grover Cleveland. 

As every one knows that the President had 
nothing to do with the appointment of the 
chairman or "head" of the commission as such, 
but left the members free to select him from 
among themselves, it seems strange that this 
story could have gained any considerable cre- 
dence. Again, when the names appeared Judge 
Gray's stood not at the top, but down in the 
body of the list. These preliminary errors, of 
course, might be attributable to the exercise of 

170 



ACTUAL FACTS 



the story-teller's license; but it is on the main 
fact that the narrator has gone most sadly 
astray. 

It had been in the President's mind for 
some time to have the whole subject of the 
strike investigated and the grievances adjusted 
if possible; he had accordingly made out a list 
of persons he deemed available for a board of 
inquiry and conciliation, and in some cases ob- 
tained their consent to serve. Later he revised 
his plan, and decided to call in the warring 
parties and let them have most to say about the 
selection of their judges. In his original list 
he had included Mr. Cleveland, whose par- 
ticipation he regarded as almost an essential to 
the success of the scheme, and when the method 
of selection was changed he still clung most 
tenaciously to this one name. He felt that he 
had a right in such an emergency to take ad- 
vantage of the wide-spread regard in which 
Mr. Cleveland was held. He had a high 
patriotic purpose in mind; this effort for the 
restoration of industrial peace and the salva- 
tion of the country from suffering could suc- 
ceed only by the backing of public sentiment; 
and he believed that the combination of the 
President and the one living ex-President, sepa- 

171 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



rated in political faith but united in an un- 
selfish undertaking for the common welfare, 
would carry weight with the mass of good 
citizens. 

When he called in the representatives of the 
miners and the operators they demanded that 
the commission of arbitration should be com- 
posed of members of certain specified classes 
and callings — an army or naval engineer, a 
sociologist, a United States judge, etc. For the 
judge's place the President had selected Will- 
iam R. Day, the bosom friend of the late Presi- 
dent McKinley and now a justice of the Su- 
preme Court. But the conference decided that 
it would be better to have a judge from the 
Third Circuit, which embraced the scene of 
the controversy, than from the Sixth, where 
Judge Day was serving; so Judge Gray was 
put on in the place to which Day had first been 
assigned. That disposes of the story that Gray 
was substituted for Cleveland, for Gray did 
not figure in the program at all till the judge's 
place had been reached and Day had been 
ruled out on grounds of locality. 

When it came to selecting the military 
engineer, the President exerted himself to the 
utmost to induce the withdrawal of this de- 

172 



WHO DID OBJECT 



mand and the substitution of the single name 
of Grover Cleveland. Some of the parties 
present expressed a doubt whether the ex-Presi- 
dent would take kindly to the idea of settling 
the strike by such means; but Mr. Roosevelt 
showed them a letter in which Mr. Cleve- 
land expressed his hearty approval of the course 
proposed. The operators present then refused 
to consider the suggestion at all. The Presi- 
dent nevertheless was so persistent that tele- 
phonic communication was opened with the 
companies' offices in New York, so that the com- 
mittee in Washington could ascertain positively 
whether they were carrying out the wishes of 
their principals. No argument or plea had 
the slightest effect upon the capitalists; they 
would not accept Mr. Cleveland as an arbitrator 
on any pretext; and with intense reluctance the 
President had to let go the most valued feature 
of his plan. 

It is too bad to spoil so pretty a story as 
the one quoted, especially its picture of Secre- 
tary Root rubbing his chin and the President 
grabbing a lead-pencil in his feverish haste to 
retrieve an error of thoughtlessness which 
might have given Mr. Cleveland so much pres- 
tige as a candidate against him in 1904; but 

T 73 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

pencil and chin, rubbing and grabbing, will 
have to go, as the President's plan did. With 
them, I fear, must be sacrificed on the altar of 
historic truth a bevy of other pleasing and dra- 
matic fictions concerning Mr. Roosevelt's treat- 
ment of possible competitors in the coming 
campaign. 

The simplest form of statement to cover the 
whole case is that, if two courses were open to 
the President, one of which would rule all his 
rivals out of the contest while the other would 
double their multitude, he would choose the 
latter. This he would do partly from an in- 
stinct of generosity which makes him some- 
times appear almost quixotic, and partly to 
gratify a taste that comes near being a mania 
with him — the love of matching his strength 
and cleverness against those of other men. 

Even the characteristic despatch concerning 
his indorsement by the Ohio convention was 
sent without a moment's deliberation, and 
merely — in the quaint phrase of one of his inti- 
mates — "for the fun of taking a fall out of 
Uncle Mark." If there had been no talk about 
it, he would not have cared a snap of his fin- 
gers whether the platform touched on 1904 or 
let it alone. Mr. Hanna lacked his usual 

174 



TASTE FOR CONTEST 



shrewdness in letting the issue be raised; for 
he must have known that as surely as he did so 
he would rouse in Mr. Roosevelt a spirit which 
would not be appeased till a battle had been 
fought out and one side or the other routed. 



13 



175 



CHAPTER XI 

A FIGHTER AND HIS METHODS 

Love of matching skill and strength — A generous adversary — 
The census spoilsmen's grievance — Harun-al-Raschid and the 
police — How a demonstration failed. 

The subject of this chapter naturally grows 
out of certain incidents mentioned in the last, 
which have shown us how Mr. Roosevelt bears 
himself toward competitors and antagonists in 
the larger field of politics. Elsewhere have 
appeared specimens of his manner of meeting 
the criticisms passed upon the work of the 
Civil-Service Commission while he was con- 
nected with it. Other illustrations are needed, 
however, to complete his portrait as a fighter. 

From his boyhood — at least from that point 
in it at which he resolved to make himself 
strong and take his share in the active sports of 
other boys — he appears to have most enjoyed 
those forms of exercise which matched him 
against his mates. He did not always defeat 
his opponents in such struggles; he did not 

176 



TYPICAL METHODS 



expect to. It was enough for him to get the 
enjoyment of the contest; and he was ready 
to "let the best fellow win," and accept the 
fortunes of war in good part whichever way 
they went. 

At college boxing was always his favorite 
amusement. A classmate who remembers well 
his exercise with the gloves says that, although 
Roosevelt was a light-weight, not naturally mus- 
cular, and suffered from a handicap of imper- 
fect vision which would have checked most 
other men, he was keen for the sport, and used 
to spar with a pair of large spectacles literally 
lashed to his head. He risked the total loss of 
his sight with every bout, as an unlucky blow 
from the other party might have smashed his 
glasses and driven them into his eyes; but in 
spite of that he was always the attacker. He 
aimed to offset his own weak point by leading 
swiftly and heavily, so that his adversary should 
be kept too busy with defensive tactics to gather 
his wits and put in any offensive work. 

Some one else — I think it is Owen Wister 
— describes his first glimpse of Roosevelt as a 
college pugilist, when, in the midst of a rattling 
exchange of blows, the umpire called "time." 
Roosevelt at once dropped his hands, but just 

177 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



as the other student, under the full momentum 
of the fight, landed a fist squarely on his nose. 
A loud chorus of "Foul!" arose from the by- 
standers. In an instant, his face streaming 
with blood, Roosevelt ran forward with a ges- 
ture of deprecation, crying out: "Stop! He 
didn't hear! He didn't hear!" and then shook 
hands warmly with the author of his misfortune 
to prove his belief that the blow was an accident. 
How well these early phenomena forecast 
the methods Mr. Roosevelt would pursue as a 
fighter in public life, every one familiar with 
his career must recognize. He has gone his 
own way as peaceably as possible, but has never 
dodged a collision where the other fellow was 
bound to have one and had come out in search 
of it. His first important victory in politics 
was won in 1884, in the Republican State Con- 
vention at Utica, N. Y., where he appeared at 
the head of a little group of Edmunds men 
from New York city. In his home district he 
had won his right to go to Utica by defeating 
the veteran boss, "Jake" Hess, who had for- 
merly swung things there to suit himself, and 
who laughed at the idea that "a youngster 
and a dude, with no support except from the 
swells of Murray Hill," could effect anything 

178 



HIS FIRST CONVENTION 



against a local party machine run by practical 
workers. 

At Utica he crossed swords with Senator 
Warner Miller, then at the height of his pres- 
tige. Miller wished to go to the national con- 
vention at Chicago as one of the delegates at 
large to support Blaine. But the Utica con- 
vention was divided; Roosevelt's little group of 
delegates, though constituting only one-seventh 
of the total vote, was numerous enough to hold 
the balance of power, and its leader had the 
shrewdness to see how to use this. So Miller 
was ingloriously beaten, Roosevelt not only go- 
ing to Chicago in his stead, but taking with him 
three other delegates at large of his own way of 
thinking. Miller had used his influence at Al- 
bany the previous winter to prevent Roosevelt's 
election as Speaker of the Assembly. After 
his triumph in the State convention, Roose- 
velt met Miller in the lobby of their hotel at 
Utica, and tapping him pleasantly on the shoul- 
der remarked: "Senator, I forgive you. Time 
makes all things even." Miller's sense of 
humor, never of the best, was not equal to the 
appreciation of this reference; but Roosevelt 
enjoyed it enough for two. 

In the spring of 1902 Congress consented to 
179 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



a plan recommended by the President in his 
message and framed a bill establishing a per- 
manent census bureau. But it tried at the same 
time a trick. The temporary force whose work 
was then drawing to a close had been selected 
on the patronage plan, without competitive ex- 
amination. The desire of the spoilsmen was 
to bring this whole body of employees into the 
classified service by legislation, so that as fast 
as the work was cleared up and the force re- 
duced the proteges could be transferred to other 
positions under the Government. Such a plan 
would, of course, have been a gross injustice to 
other eligibles who had fairly earned their 
places by competitive examination. 

Senate and House vied with each other in 
trying to load down the new bill with pro- 
visions which would accomplish the desired 
end by indirection. President Roosevelt, how- 
ever, warned his friends in both chambers that 
if the bill came to him full of possible abuses 
he should veto it, even at the cost of losing the 
permanent bureau on which he had so set his 
heart. The bill, with its full burden of poten- 
tial spoils, went to conference, where the advo- 
cates of the various schemes locked horns and 
fought their battle out; the result was the evo- 

180 



CENSUS SPOILS PROGRAM 

lution of a paragraph which simply authorized 
the director of the census, with the approval 
of the Secretary of the Interior, to appoint to 
the permanent census office such members of 
the old force as he chose, placed these persons 
in the classified service by virtue of such ap- 
pointment, and required that all subsequent ap- 
pointments should be made through the usual 
machinery of the Civil-Service Commission. 
In this form the conference bill went through 
both houses with a rush, the spoilsmen believ- 
ing that they had got, in effect, what they had 
started for. 

The President saw his chance and lost not 
a moment in improving it. In an official let- 
ter to the Secretary of the Interior, who was 
entirely sympathetic with his purposes, he 
stated the interpretation he wished put upon 
the civil-service paragraph. Then he signed 
the bill. The next morning the spoils Con- 
gressmen awoke to the fact that instead of 
tricking the President they had tricked them- 
selves. The paragraph they had passed, with 
his perfectly legitimate interpretation of it, tied 
up the whole business so that the director of 
the census would have to drop between 1,500 
and 2,000 of the congressional proteges within 

181 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



the succeeding four months, and any additions 
he might need to make to his staff thereafter 
would have to be drawn from the registers of 
the Civil-Service Commission. 

A favorite maxim of Roosevelt's is the old 
Norse viking's commentary on a short sword: 
"If you go in close enough, your sword will 
be long enough." His own sword is short, but 
he walks up to his subject so directly that his 
thrusts reach its heart. When he was engaged 
in reforming the police establishment in New 
York cautious friends warned him that other 
commissioners with virtuous intentions had 
tried the same thing, but that the force was so 
honeycombed with petty jealousies and favor- 
itism and blackmail that the board could never 
ascertain the truth about what the men were 
doing. 

"We'll see," he remarked, and he used the 
words literally. That day, at the close of office 
hours, he privately invited one of the doubters 
to accompany him on an early stroll through 
part of the East Side the following morning. 

"How early?" asked his friend. 

"Half past two. Meet me at Third Ave- 
nue and Forty-second Street." 

The friend found the commissioner at the 
182 



"WE'LL SEE" 



appointed place and hour, armed only with a 
little stick and a written list of the patrolmen's 
posts in the district which was to be visited. 
They walked over each beat separately. In the 
first three beats they found only one man on 
post. One of the others had gone to assist the 
man on the third, but there was no trace of 
the third man's whereabouts. They went over 
to Second Avenue, where they came upon a 
patrolman seated on a box with a woman. 

"Patrolman," asked the commissioner, "are 
you doing your duty on post 27?" 

The fellow jumped up in a hurry. This 
pedestrian, though unknown to him, was obvi- 
ously familiar with police matters; so he stam- 
mered out, with every attempt to be obsequious: 
"Yes, sir; I am, sir." 

"Is it all right for you to sit down?" in- 
quired the mysterious stranger. 

"Yes, sir — no, sir — well, sir, I wasn't sitting 
down. I was just waiting for my partner, the 
patrolman on the next beat. Really, I wasn't 
sitting down." 

"Very well," said the stranger, cutting him 
short and starting on. 

The officer ran along, explaining again 
with much volubility that he had not been sit- 

'83 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ting down — he had just been leaning a little 
against something while he waited. 

"That will do; you are following me off 
post. Go back to your beat now and present 
yourself before me at headquarters at half 
past nine this morning. I am Commissioner 
Roosevelt." 

Another three blocks and the strollers came 
upon a patrolman chatting with a man and 
a woman. They passed the group, went a lit- 
tle way, and returned; the woman was gone, but 
the patrolman and the man were still there, and 
deep in conversation. The talk was inter- 
rupted to enable the officer to answer the com- 
missioner's questions. The man seized the op- 
portunity to slip off. 

"They were drunk, sir, a little intoxicated, 
sir," was the patrolman's excuse, as he caught 
an inkling of the situation. "I was just trying 
to quiet them down a bit. I'm sorry, sir, very 
sorry." 

"That's enough. Come to Commissioner 
Roosevelt's office at half past nine." 

In search of the roundsman the commissioner 
started, to call him to account for all this laxity 
of discipline. The roundsman was found gos- 
siping with two patrolmen on another beat. 

184 



HARUN-AL-RASCHID 



"Which of you men belongs here?" de- 
manded the commissioner, addressing the pa- 
trolmen. 

They and their companion met the inquiry 
defiantly. One of the trio retorted: "What 
business is that of yours?" 

The commissioner made no response except 
to repeat his question in another form: "Which 
one of you is covering beat 31?" 

It was now plain that they were in trouble. 
By the light of a neighboring gas-lamp the 
roundsman recognized the interrogator's face. 
He cast a significant look at one of his com- 
panions, who answered, meekly enough, "It's 
me, sir." 

The other told where he belonged and left 
quickly for his post, while the roundsman made 
a poor fist of explaining that he was "just ad- 
monishing the patrolmen to move around and 
do their duty" when the commissioner came up. 

"You may call on me at half past nine 
and tell me all about it," was the response; "I 
haven't time now to listen." 

And so on till daylight. A little allevia- 
tion was once given to the discouragement of 
these discoveries when the commissioner moved 
into a precinct where he found everything run- 

185 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ning smoothly and in good order. The captain 
who had charge of it was ordered to call at 
headquarters that day, but to receive an expres- 
sion of approval, not a reprimand like the 
others. The crestfallen culprits, at their hear- 
ing at half past nine, offered every possible ex- 
cuse for their shortcomings. Some of them 
further assured the commissioner that that was 
the only night they had been derelict. 

"Take care that there is never another," was 
his response. "I am going to see with my own 
eyes how you men employ your time." 

Here was a case of the short sword which 
was long enough when used at close range. He 
had set out to fight corruption, laziness, and in- 
competence on the police force till he drove 
them out. His methods were novel, but what 
he saw himself was vastly more convincing 
than anything others could tell him. 

The United Societies for Liberal Sunday 
Laws held a monster parade in New York 
while Mr. Roosevelt was in the midst of his en- 
forcement of the excise law. Several of the city 
fathers and a few men prominently connected 
with the brewing and distillery interests were 
invited to review the procession. A perfunc- 
tory invitation was sent, of course, to the pres- 

186 



SURPRISED REMONSTRANTS 

ident of the Police Board, but with no suspicion 
that he would accept, as the whole demonstra- 
tion was designed as a protest against his alleged 
tyranny. It was a mistaken assumption. At the 
hour designated the tyrant promptly mounted 
the reviewing-stand, greeting the others there 
with smiles and bows. Some of them did not 
know him by sight, and one, presently hearing 
the name Roosevelt on the lips of his com- 
panions, remarked to an affable stranger near 
him: 

"I wish Roosevelt hadn't pushed this excise 
business so far." 

"I 'pushed' it only to the extent of enforcing 
the law as I found it," was the good-tempered 
answer; "I didn't make the law." 

The reviewer was almost as much startled 
by the contretemps as was one of the reviewed 
a while later. He was a sturdy veteran of the 
Franco-Prussian War who had turned out to 
make the welkin ring for free beer. As his de- 
tachment of paraders approached the stand the 
old fellow waved his arm impressively toward 
the advancing host and their banners, and 
shouted, with all the sarcasm possible concen- 
trated in his tone: 

"Nun, wo ist der Roosevelt!" 

i8 7 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



And was struck dumb by the vision of a 
smiling round face leaning over the rail toward 
him with the response: 

"Hier bin ich! Was willst du, Kamarad?" 

As soon as the veteran could command his 
voice again he led a cheer for the man he had 
set out to denounce. 

Presently came along a carriage bearing a 
transparency: "Roosevelt's Razzle-dazzle Re- 
form Racket." It was soon followed by an- 
other: "Send the Police Czar to Russia." The 
Czar greeted both with a laugh, and sent a 
policeman after the carriages to beg the gift of 
the two signs as souvenirs. The occupants 
were too surprised to refuse, and went over the 
rest of the route without any sneering insignia. 
Before the parade ended the news of the com- 
missioner's presence on the stand, and the way 
he was enjoying the sport, had passed all the 
way down the line, and the cheering became 
general, punctuated with such approving calls 
as "Bully for Teddy!" "He's all right!" "Good 
boy!" 

"Have you had fun, commissioner?" one of 
the last stragglers asked, as the review drew to 
a close. 

"Never better in my life," was the cheery 
188 



FALSEHOOD REBUKED 



answer. "I wonder which side the joke was 
on?" 

A New York newspaper came out with a 
bitter attack on the Police Board, charging it 
with inefficiency, and publishing in proof there- 
of "A Catalogue of the Principal Highway 
Robberies and Burglaries of the Preceding 
Fifty Days." It had been the custom of public 
functionaries in New York to ignore that sort 
of criticism as unworthy of notice, or merely 
return abuse for abuse. But such was not 
Roosevelt's style. He took up the alleged cases 
one by one and sifted them, and then met the 
charges with the deadly parallel in a rival news- 
paper. He put in one column the catalogue, 
and in the next — item opposite item — the true 
stories; showing whether the event had actually 
occurred, and, if so, what the police had done, 
how the booty had been recovered, and what 
had happened to the criminals. Out of the 
forty-four robberies listed, all but four proved 
to be "fakes" or failures. 

But the answer did not end the defense. It 
added statistics to show that, comparing the 
fifty days under scrutiny with the correspond- 
ing period under the last preceding police ad- 
ministration, the number of felonies committed 

189 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



had diminished by 16 and the number of felons 
arrested increased by 15 per cent. Then it 
turned its artillery upon former misstatements 
in the same newspaper, and concluded the 
merciless exposure with a quotation from Ma- 
caulay's essay on the Memoirs of Barere: "In 
him the qualities which are the proper objects 
of hatred and the qualities which are the 
proper objects of contempt preserve an ex- 
quisite and absolute harmony. As soon as he 
ceases to write trifles he begins to write lies; 
and such lies! A man who has never been in 
the tropics does not know what a thunder-storm 
means; a man who has never looked on Niagara 
has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who 
has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not 
to know what it is to lie. . . . We have now 
gibbeted the carrion; and from its eminence of 
infamy it will not be easily taken down." 

Even the judiciary was not spared when 
occasion demanded that it be handled frankly. 
Judge Cowing having, in a charge to the 
grand jury, once commented upon the in- 
crease of crime in New York in phrases that 
seemed to reflect somewhat upon the Police 
Department, Mr. Roosevelt seized the oppor- 
tunity offered by an address before a conference 

190 



REPRIMANDING THE BENCH 

of Methodist ministers to answer: "The judge's 
apprehensions were unfounded. In the aggre- 
gate there has been no increase of crime; there 
has been a decrease. In the next place, the 
most effective way to reduce crime is for the 
judges and magistrates to impose heavier sen- 
tences on criminals. The police do their duty 
well; but if the courts let the criminals go with 
inadequate sentences, the effect of the labor of 
the police is largely wasted. When I speak of 
inadequate sentences I mean such sentences as 
those imposed in the last six months by Judge 
Cowing and his associates. . . . Most of these 
criminals, guilty of highway robbery, burglary, 
grand larceny, and the like, are already free 
again, and the police must begin once more to 
watch over their deeds and to try to protect 
decent citizens against them. There is an ur- 
gent need that in their warfare against the crim- 
inal classes the police should receive help from 
the judiciary. ... I should not speak of this 
at all, if one of the judges had not himself in- 
voked the comparison." 

The criticism which most unprejudiced 

commentators pass upon Mr. Roosevelt's way 

of carrying the fighting over into his adversary's 

corner is that so many of his retorts begin 

14 191 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



like Horace Greeley's: "You lie! you villain, 
you lie!" At the same time it must be ad- 
mitted that, other things being equal, such can- 
dor does a good deal to clear the air before the 
real battle opens. I remember once hearing 
Mr. Roosevelt, as Civil-Service Commissioner, 
discredit a certain Cabinet member's truthful- 
ness to his face. Another person who was pres- 
ent — a mild-mannered man with an ingenuous 
soul — seemed deeply pained by the scene while 
it lasted, and afterward said to me: "It was 
very discourteous treatment for Commissioner 
Roosevelt to visit upon an officer of so much 
higher rank. Why, he actually accused him of 
lying." And then, after a moment's pause, but 
with no indication of seeing anything funny in 
the remark, he added: "And what was worse, 
my dear sir, he went on and proved it." 



192 



CHAPTER XII 

WAR AND PEACE 

A much misunderstood philosophy — Manly sports as a life prepara- 
tion — Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward Spain — The Monroe 
doctrine, the Hague court, and the Kishenev petition. 

"WHENEVER on any point we come in con- 
tact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall 
always strive to speak courteously and respect- 
fully of that foreign power. Let us make it 
evident that we intend to do justice. Then 
let us make it equally evident that we will 
not tolerate injustice being done us in return. 
Let us further make it evident that we use no 
words which we are not prepared to back up 
with deeds, and that while our speech is always 
moderate we are ready and willing to make it 
good. Such an attitude will be the surest pos- 
sible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, 
the attainment of which is and must ever be 
the prime aim of a self-governing people." 

Without these words, publicly uttered, to 
support me, I should doubtless have astonished 

193 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



many readers when I said that Theodore Roose- 
velt, whose lips frame the word "war" so fre- 
quently, is not a lover of war for war's own 
sake. No one realizes the horrors, the demor- 
alization, the nameless cruelties, attendant on 
an armed conflict between nations and parts of 
nations, more than he. To go to Cuba he tore 
himself away from a convalescent wife and a 
young babe. None loves his home and family 
more dearly, or appreciates more keenly what 
it means when husbands and lovers, fathers, 
sons and brothers are cut off in their ripe man- 
hood, and the women and little ones dependent 
on them are thrown upon the mercies of the 
world. Yet multitudes of Americans shudder 
at his philosophy, because often it treats peace 
with scorn and places war among the most im- 
portant levers of civilization — nay, in a sense, 
the supreme test of the worth of a people. 
Analysis could reduce it to certain elementary 
propositions, which may be roughly stated thus: 
(i) Were human nature perfect, a state of 
perpetual and wholly honorable peace would 
be possible, because no one group of human 
beings would force any other group into a posi- 
tion from which there is no peaceful escape 
without dishonor. 

194 



PHILOSOPHY OF WAR 



(2) Human nature being still very imper- 
fect, strong nations continue to prey upon weak 
ones, bullying nations to impose upon those 
which will submit to such treatment, and dis- 
satisfied elements within a nation to rebel with- 
out reason against the constituted authority. 

(3) Peace, bought at the price of conces- 
sions to force which has only injustice behind 
it, is as unrighteous as war waged for the delib- 
erate purpose of imposing injustice upon others. 

(4) The nation which falls into the habit 
of valuing peace above all other things and of 
purchasing it at any price, has its moral vitality 
so sapped thereby, and its instinct of right and 
wrong so dulled, that it soon drops out of the 
van of the higher civilization. 

(5) This habit is easily formed by over- 
looking one and another case where the exer- 
cise of force would right a wrong, and resort- 
ing to diplomacy when that will afford only a 
palliative. 

(6) A nation which acquires a reputation 
for avoiding war at any cost comes to be recog- 
nized as an easy mark, and invites indignities 
and even outrages which no other nation would 
think of visiting upon it if it were famous for its 
prompt punishment of such offenses. 

195 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



(7) In order to be always in a position to 
defend itself and assert its rights, a nation must 
maintain an army and navy in a condition of 
efficiency at all times, and this means constant 
practise of the arts of war in times of peace. 

There is the whole matter in a nutshell. 
Those of us who can not assent to all Mr. Roose- 
velt's philosophy think it leaves out of account 
the train of moral evils which follow in the 
physical wake of war: the enlarged sense, in ill- 
balanced minds, of the value of violence, and 
the diminished sense of the value of self- 
restraint; the distorted popular view of what 
constitutes justice in emergencies ; the wide- 
spread notion that honesty and responsibility 
are elastic ideals, to be measured by the remote- 
ness or the imminence of a crisis. But he would 
say no; all these things are discounted, not ig- 
nored. His theory is that they are outweighed 
in importance by the larger interests in the op- 
posite scale. 

War and the chase are occupations insepa- 
rably associated in the activities of primitive 
man. Mr. Roosevelt does not believe in get- 
ting too far away from primitive man. His 
theory of human progress involves not the 
wholesale surrender of the old order as prelim- 

196 



IMPORTANCE OF EXERCISE 

inary to taking up the new, but the retention of 
all that is best in the old as a foundation for 
the new to build upon. Yet no one ever saw 
Theodore Roosevelt shooting at pigeons let out 
of a trap at so many paces. No one ever knew 
him to leave a wounded beast suffering in the 
tracks where he had shot it down. No one ever 
found in him the least trace of cruelty, as he 
sees it, in dealing with an animal either wild 
or tame. His home swarms with pets of all 
sorts, from horses and dogs to tropical birds of 
prey; his children are brought up among them, 
and encouraged to play with them fearlessly; 
but the father's mandate, back of everything, 
is unchangeable: "Be kind." 

Where Mr. Roosevelt differs from most men 
who call themselves sportsmen is that sport 
with him is only a means to an end. He does 
not ride and hunt to kill time, but to prepare 
himself for the larger things of his career. 
Physical soundness he puts at the basis of all 
effective effort in the world. The man who 
lets his bodily force be dissipated by idleness he 
regards as almost as criminal as one who wrecks 
his system by a deliberate course of vice. Pres- 
ident McKinley's friends used to attribute his 
ability to endure worry and abuse as well as he 

197 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



did, to his habit of dropping the day's cares 
with the day itself and carrying no troubles to 
bed with him. Mr. Roosevelt gets too health- 
ily tired by bedtime to have his rest broken, but 
the secret of his thriving so well under his many 
burdens is his refusal to let anything whatever 
interfere with his daily exercise in the open air. 
No affair of state, no social entertainment, no 
phase of the weather has power to postpone 
this part of the President's program of duty. 

For a duty he thinks it, quite as important 
as the duty of studying out economic problems 
and satisfying politicians. He feels that his 
sound physique is one of the assets on which his 
fellow citizens banked when they bespoke his 
services, and that to let it deteriorate would 
be to rob them of their dues to that extent. 
Moreover, hunting big game, hard riding, 
bouts with the gloves and foils, twenty-mile 
tramps over rough roads, scaling mountain 
crags, polo, football, wrestling, are to the 
individual, in Mr. Roosevelt's view, what 
occasional stimulation of the war spirit is 
to the nation. They harden his muscles, im- 
prove his wind and steady his nerves. They 
bring him face to face with danger till he learns 
to despise it. They sharpen his senses. They 

198 




AN AFTERNOON GALLOP. 



PERPETUAL READINESS 



make him resourceful almost in spite of him- 
self. They quicken his wit and strengthen his 
will. They teach him self-care, self-control, 
self-confidence. And no man knows, till he 
has been actually tested, how he would act in 
emergencies. 

It is on his belief in perpetual readiness — 
not on any liking for the attitude of the bully 
: — that Mr. Roosevelt founds his assurance that 
manly sports, and especially sports involving 
competition and struggle, are an essential part 
of every man's training for life. What is true 
of the individual he regards as true of the na- 
tion. No people, he believes, ever kept them- 
selves in condition for doing their best work in 
the world by going out of their way to avoid 
trouble which was bound to come sooner or 
later. Among schoolboys the most efficient 
peacemaker is he who first by gentle words 
strives to soothe the passions of two combatants, 
but, if they do not yield, is able to seize both 
by the hair and knock their heads together till 
they consent to listen to reason. 

Mr. Roosevelt's anxiety for intervention in 
Cuba, even at the cost of a war, was founded 
on his belief that Spain would never compose 
the troubles there, and that as long as she re- 

199 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

tained her hold on the island we should con- 
tinue to have almost within gunshot of our 
southern coast corrupt government, official 
cruelty, revolts, bloodshed, a birthplace of 
plagues and a refuge for runaway criminals. 
It was too much like living next door to a pest- 
house; and if the authors of the nuisance had 
shown by all their past history an unwilling- 
ness to change their ways except under compul- 
sion, he thought that the sooner the compulsion 
were applied the better. 

Having made up his mind that Spain, with 
her duelist's sense of honor, would not yield 
without a fight, he was impatient for the con- 
summation. One Sunday morning in March, 
1898, we were sitting in his library discussing 
the significance of the news that Cervera's 
squadron was about to sail for Cuba, when he 
suddenly rose and brought his two hands to- 
gether with a resounding clap. 

"If I could do what I pleased," he ex- 
claimed, "I would send Spain notice to-day 
that we should consider her despatch of that 
squadron a hostile act. Then, if she didn't heed 
the warning, she would have to take the conse- 
quences." 

"You are sure," I asked, "that it is with un- 
200 



OUR CASE AGAINST SPAIN 

friendly intent that she is sending the squad- 
ron?" " 

"What else can it be? The Cubans have 
no navy; therefore the squadron can not be 
coming to fight the insurgents. The only naval 
power interested in Cuban affairs is the United 
States. Spain is simply forestalling the 'brush' 
which she knows, as we do, is coming sooner or 
later." 

"And if she refused to withdraw the orders 
to Cervera " 

"I should send out a squadron to meet his 
on the high seas and smash it! Then I would 
force the fighting from that day to the end of 
the war." 

It was an open secret, even then, that the 
Cabinet was divided on the war question. Sec- 
retaries Gage and Long represented the peace 
party, and Secretaries Alger and Bliss the other. 
Secretary Sherman, who as premier would nor- 
mally have exerted great influence in the ex- 
ecutive councils as a champion of diplomatic 
methods, had become too enfeebled to take 
any effective interest in what was going on. 
President McKinley, having heard that Mr. 
Roosevelt entertained some decided views on 
the demands of the situation, sent for him one 

201 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



morning and listened to his exposition of them. 
Later on the same day, when the subject came 
up in the Cabinet, the President said with a 
smile: "Gentlemen, not one of you has put half 
so much vigor into your expression of opinion 
as Mr. Roosevelt, our Assistant Secretary of 
the Navy. He has the whole program of the 
war mapped out." 

"Couldn't you get him to make a report in 
writing for our guidance?" inquired one of the 
party, adopting the President's jocose tone. 

"Better than that: I can call him in and 
let you hear for yourselves," answered the 
President. 

There was a general chorus of approval, and 
Mr. Roosevelt was sent for. He responded at 
once. Mr. McKinley propounded a few ques- 
tions to set him going, and the whole Cabinet 
leaned back in their chairs and listened to a 
second edition of what the President had al- 
ready heard, but delivered with increased em- 
phasis and annotated with many characteristic 
gestures. When the speech was finished, the 
orator retired. The President looked around 
with an amused expression; three or four of the 
others laughed aloud. Those who did not 
laugh were restrained by the seriousness of the 

202 



CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY 

crisis, though finding something funny in what 
seemed to them the overwrought enthusiasm 
and the very radical proposals of the young 
Assistant Secretary. Before the afternoon was 
over, the scene in the Cabinet chamber had be- 
come the day's gossip at the Washington clubs. 
It seemed too good to keep.* 

* The whole record of this incident was long ago transcribed from 
notes made by me in the spring of 1898, with the idea of some possible 
historical use to be made of them later. I therefore feel the greatest 
assurance of their correctness, as there was no chance for my memory 
to play me tricks with the lapse of time. I have lifted the passage bodily 
into this book, in the shape in which it stood a great while before ex- 
Secretary Long published his recollections. With all deference to Mr. 
Long, and entire faith in his sincerity of purpose, I am bound to believe 
that he overlooked one essential feature of the story. He represents 
Mr. Roosevelt as anxious to crush Cervera's fleet on the high seas in- 
stanter, and without notice ; whereas my notes show that Mr. Roose- 
velt's plan involved, as a preliminary, a warning to Spain that she must 
take the responsibility for whatever followed. 

To confirm my recollection of what seems to me the vital element in 
this matter, I have before me as I write a recent letter from a colleague 
of Mr. Long's in President McKinley's Cabinet, who says that he " re- 
calls distinctly Mr. Roosevelt's response to the invitation to lay his views 
before the whole Administration " ; that Mr. Roosevelt "declared em- 
phatically that the Spanish fleet should not be allowed to come " ; and 
that when "President McKinley remarked that we were still at peace 
with Spain, and to interfere with this fleet would be an act of war, Mr. 
Roosevelt replied that Spain should be given to understand that the 
sending of that fleet here would be considered an act of war, and that we 
would govern ourselves accordingly if it were sent." 

A comparison of this description of what occurred in the Cabinet 
room, with my quotation of Mr. Roosevelt's language at our interview 
in his house, seems to me to make the proof of Mr. Roosevelt's real po- 
sition as strong as it could be made, especially as the corroborating letter 
was written without any knowledge of what I had prepared for print. 

203 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Yet the same statesmen who gave vent most 
heartily to their merriment at the council-table, 
and let the story leak out as a choice tidbit, were 
among those who cheered aloud the news of 
Dewey's victory at Manila two months later. 
They seemed quite oblivious of the fact that 
the principle of a first master-stroke was the 
same that Roosevelt had set forth, with other 
names and circumstances, in his speech to the 
Cabinet; that the despatch sending Dewey to 
the Philippines was signed by Roosevelt; and 
that the officer who obeyed the order with such 
splendid Yankee dash was the man on whom 
Roosevelt had fixed his eye for this very job 
before any one knew positively that war was 
coming. 

The victory over Spain, the liberation of 
Cuba, the acquisition of an ungrateful burden 
in the Philippines, were only secondary results 
of the war. The largest was the standing our 
own nation suddenly assumed before the world. 
That Congress voted, with no partizan division, 
a preliminary $50,000,000 to be spent at the 
unlimited discretion of the President for the 
national defense; that when a popular loan of 
$200,000,000 was called for it was sevenfold 
oversubscribed; that, although the free-coinage 

204 



A NEW WORLD POWER 



ghost had been only about one year laid, the 
national finances did not go to a silver basis; 
and that the whole war practically consisted 
of our two victories on the sea, both exhibiting 
gunnery unexampled in naval annals: these 
facts aroused Europe to a realization that there 
was a new world power to be reckoned with in 
every international undertaking thereafter. 

The first proof came with the campaign to 
relieve the besieged legations in Peking. Our 
Government astonished its allies by the humane 
attitude it maintained throughout that episode, 
and by which it saved China from summary 
partition as the result of the Boxer insurrection. 
That a nation commonly described as mer- 
cenary in spirit and devoid of the finer senti- 
ments should thus lead all Christendom in mag- 
nanimity, was a revelation. 

Mr. McKinley was President during the 
Chinese episode. In the establishment of The 
Hague tribunal of arbitration, however, the 
bulk of the active work fell upon the shoulders 
of President Roosevelt. A man as eager for 
bloodletting as he is represented to be would 
hardly have lent his efforts to the support of 
such a peace project. The truth is that no one 
is more willing than he to meet others in the 

205 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



spirit of compromise where the question at 
issue is one that will admit of mutual conces- 
sions. He merely distinguishes between arbi- 
trating questions open to dispute and arbitra- 
ting those of which the merits are already plain. 
Everything possible to arbitrate without injus- 
tice, such as the measure of damages for injuries 
inflicted in one country upon the citizens of an- 
other, he would send without cavil to The 
Hague. Questions of taking away land that 
belongs to another he would not. 

For that reason he induced Venezuela and 
the European claimants to carry the issues in 
dispute between them to the great international 
court, but set up a special commission to review 
the Alaska boundary case. His theory was that 
the United States had no concessions to make, 
but was willing that the other side should thor- 
oughly convince itself of the hollowness of its 
claims before surrendering them. As he said 
once, a good while before he became President: 
"If England wishes to settle the Alaska ques- 
tion for good, I should answer: 'By all means. 
But before we begin to talk, gentlemen, here is 
our map!'" The sequel of the Alaska discus- 
sion appears to have justified his position. 

The Venezuela incident, by the way, 
206 



MONROE DOCTRINE 



brought into striking prominence the attitude 
of Mr. Roosevelt toward the group of Ameri- 
can republics to the south of ours. For years 
he had been known as a vigorous champion of 
the Monroe doctrine, and no louder voice than 
his was heard in the popular chorus of approval 
which greeted President Cleveland's Venezuela 
message of 1895. On this apparently favorable 
disposition President Castro doubtless traded 
in his earlier dealings with the European claim- 
ants, and it was some such consideration which 
made him so anxious to name Mr. Roosevelt as 
sole arbitrator. 

But here he was counting without his host. 
Mr. Roosevelt's conception of the duty of the 
United States to defend the southern republics 
from partition or absorption by any Old World 
power includes a strong sense of the obligation 
of these republics to abstain from gratuitously 
embroiling the United States with other na- 
tions. If the little republics expect the big re- 
public's aid, they must conduct themselves in a 
manner to deserve it. No Central or South 
American state has a right to treat foreigners 
unjustly, and then run to the United States for 
protection as soon as their victims threaten to 
retaliate. The United States would not tol- 



15 207 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



erate the seizure of an inch of American terri- 
tory as a retaliatory measure; but if a Euro- 
pean power sees fit to give the offending little 
fire-eater a sound spanking, it is not in Mr. 
Roosevelt's code that our Government must 
interfere. 

This is his well-balanced view of the Monroe 
doctrine, and there is real kindliness of spirit 
behind it. At the same time that he was re- 
fusing to act as arbitrator himself and was main- 
taining a complacent demeanor in the presence 
of the foreign naval demonstration, he was giv- 
ing not only his consent but his encouragement 
to the plan by which Herbert W. Bowen, our 
own minister at Caracas, should become Vene- 
zuela's plenipotentiary in the negotiations with 
the allies. It was an extraordinary concession 
for a professedly neutral power to make to a 
party in interest in such a controversy. 

At the Easter season in 1903 the Jews in 
Kishenev, Russia, were attacked by mobs, and 
slain or beaten and driven from their homes 
without discrimination as to age or sex. The 
news of the outrages was so rigorously sup- 
pressed by the local authorities that it did not 
reach the outside world till some of the sufferers 
had fled to this country for refuge and told their 

208 



KISHENEV MASSACRE 



story to gatherings of their coreligionists in 
New York and elsewhere. It is doubtful, in- 
deed, whether the Czar learned what had hap- 
pened till the harrowing details drifted back to 
Russia from other countries. Everything in- 
dicates that as soon as he did he took prompt 
measures to punish the ringleaders, and also the 
governor of the province and other official func- 
tionaries whose seeming indifference had en- 
couraged the rioters. 

The Jews of the United States and western 
Europe were naturally much incensed, and 
wished to have their respective governments 
make suitable representations to Russia of the 
abhorrence felt throughout Christendom for 
the outrages, in the hope that such a united pro- 
test would stimulate the Czar to extra exertions 
for the protection of his helpless subjects. To 
this end they drew up memorials for signa- 
ture by benevolent people of all castes and 
religions, which could be presented at the court 
of St. Petersburg through the usual diplomatic 
agencies. 

The wide publication of these projects 
moved the Russian Government to convey in- 
formally to the other governments, and espe- 
cially to that of the United States, an intima- 

209 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tion that it could not consent to receive such 
representations from any source whatever, as 
the subject-matter was exclusively a domestic 
interest. The European governments there- 
fore dropped the whole business. Not so the 
Government at Washington. President Roose- 
velt gave the Russian ambassador every oppor- 
tunity to put into formal shape the intimation 
already informally thrown out, and when this 
was not done he told the Jews that he would 
undertake to bring their paper to the notice of 
the Czar. In about a fortnight the memorial, 
signed by a multitude of prominent citizens, in- 
cluding public officers, educators, business men 
of note, and clergymen of all faiths, was in his 

hands. 

Onlookers in the Old World held their 
breath at his temerity. The press in this coun- 
try discussed the situation from every point of 
view. Would the presentation of the memorial 
under the circumstances be considered by Rus- 
sia an affront which she must resent? Would 
the refusal of the Russian Government to re- 
ceive the memorial be an affront which we must 
resent? Would the President force the me- 
morial upon the Czar's attention in spite of 
everything? Would the incident lead to war, 



2IO 



JEWISH MEMORIAL 



or, at any rate, to a suspension of diplomatic 
relations for some time? 

All surmises proved vain. The incident 
was as unexciting as possible. The Russian 
Government declined to receive the memorial, 
as was expected. But no affront was given or 
assumed. Our representative at St. Petersburg 
visited the Foreign Office and came away with- 
out meeting with so much as a scowl of dis- 
approval. Yet, by the clever handling of the 
affair, all had been done that any one set out 
to do; for the letter from Secretary Hay, in 
which our charge was instructed to inquire 
whether the Russian Government would re- 
ceive the memorial, itself recited the full text 
of that document. The cause for which the 
American Jews were pleading had been pre- 
sented in their own chosen form not only to 
Russia but to the great tribunal of the world's 
opinion. The voice of American humanity 
had spoken, and without offense, while the 
dread of a fatal breach of etiquette was silencing 
all Europe. 

It is such a position that President Roose- 
velt would have the United States occupy in 
the sisterhood of nations, as the great peace- 
maker, yet at the same time the fearless cham- 

211 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



pion of justice; the leader of the world in com- 
merce and the useful arts, yet never flinching 
at the menace of war when a righteous cause 
demands aggression or requires defense. If 
war must come to us at any stage as an incident 
of this program, he would welcome it as a na- 
tional inspiration; if it were forced upon us 
when not necessary, he would deplore it; as an 
end in itself, or as a means to an unworthy 
achievement, he would resist it as stoutly as 
he denounces peace bought at the price of 
dishonor. 



212 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 

Two questions that blend — A policy never before tried — Ideal 
conditions for inaugurating it — The Washington dinner inci- 
dent — A needless uproar — Dr. Crum's collectorship. 

The Southern question in American poli- 
tics since the reconstruction era has been sim- 
ply the negro question under a larger name. 
At least the negro has been so far the dominant 
element in the Southern question as to obscure 
all the other elements. The fact that, although 
economic issues of great importance have come 
up for discussion and settlement in every polit- 
ical campaign, the menace of negro supremacy 
has been too serious to admit of any trifling, has 
kept a large majority of Southern white men 
of all shades of opinion banded together for 
mutual protection. This is what is known as 
the Solid South. The Democratic party, as the 
only generally recognized opponent of the party 
to which the negroes belonged, has extended its 

213 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



name over the heterogeneous group, regardless 
of the historic meaning of Democracy. 

All Republican Presidents since Grant had 
found the Southern question the most trouble- 
some in the foreground of the administrative 
field. All had been embarrassed by the fact 
that the votes of the negro leaders, good and 
bad alike, had been sought and used in the last 
national convention, and would be in the next, 
since they counted for just as much as an equal 
number of votes of white delegates. The man- 
ner in which Mr. Roosevelt came to the presi- 
dency, however, left him with a free hand. He 
owed nothing to any delegations, negro or 
white, Northern or Southern, in the Philadel- 
phia convention of 1900; for he had spent all 
his time there not in seeking the nomination for 
Vice-President, but in trying to ward it off. He 
had welcomed any aid he could get toward 
throwing the nomination to somebody else; the 
delegates who were most enthusiastic for him 
provoked his displeasure rather than his favor, 
and he did everything he could to nullify their 
efforts. On his accession to the presidency just 
one thought possessed his mind respecting the 
South: If he could not in his own term break 
its solidity, he could at least set the solvent 

214 



REHABILITATING THE SOUTH 

forces at work so that this section would take 
its place politically with the others under some 
succeeding administration. 

On the day of President McKinley's obse- 
quies in Washington I sat for an hour with Mr. 
Roosevelt in his temporary home, going over 
with him his plans for the future. It was 
strictly a friendly talk, free from the profes- 
sional savor on either side. A month or so 
later, discussing the Southern-patronage ques- 
tion in the New York Evening Post, I wrote: 

The President, as a man who believes in 
parties, will prefer Republicans to Democrats, 
and strong party men to those who are uncer- 
tain and indifferent. But if it came to a ques- 
tion between an unfit Republican and a fit 
Democrat, he would not hesitate a moment to 
choose the Democrat. It has always been Mr. 
Roosevelt's desire to see the South back in full 
communion with the other sections in conduct- 
ing the National Government, instead of stand- 
ing on the outside whenever a Republican ad- 
ministration is installed at Washington. This 
is not the case with any other section, and he 
would take great pride in breaking it up in the 
South. 

And the negro? He must take his chances 
like the rest. If he be a man who has earned 
the respect of his white neighbors by his efforts 

215 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



to be a good citizen, by avoiding disreputable 
associations and trying to be helpful in the com- 
munity where he lives, he has nothing to fear 
from President Roosevelt because of his color; 
but if he has led a loose life, ignored his obli- 
gations to his fellow men individually and to 
society and the law, he will have no favor what- 
ever because he is black or because he is a Re- 
publican. The standard of personal character 
and civic virtue which the President will set 
up for the negro's emulation is better embodied 
in Booker T. Washington than in any other 
man of color known to the public. By this 
measure every negro who aspires to office will 
be tested. By the degree in which he ap- 
proaches or falls short of it he will be judged 
fit or unfit. 

Of course, such a policy in the South meant 
only one thing as far as Mr. Roosevelt's imme- 
diate prospects were concerned. It was revolu- 
tionary, and flung the gage of battle squarely 
in the face of Southern Republicanism, or 
what had passed for it up to that time. It said 
to the leaders in effect: "I have no use for any 
so-called party which exists for revenue only. 
I may be nominated for a second term or I may 
not, but if I am I shall be under no obligations 
to such an one for votes. The idea that, in 

216 



INDEPENDENT APPOINTMENTS 

States which have never given a Republican 
majority and have none in sight, the forms of 
partizan organization shall be kept up merely 
as an excuse for distributing Federal patronage, 
is repugnant to the principles of popular gov- 
ernment; and the admission of a troop of such 
office-holders to a Republican national conven- 
tion once in four years on a footing of equality 
with the delegates representing legitimate con- 
stituencies, is a fraud. Hereafter the South 
shall be governed in its Federal relations by 
the best men I can get from either race or either 
party. 1 ' 

This idea President Roosevelt began to 
hammer home by making appointments which 
fairly electrified the South. He was in the 
midst of his task in October, 1901, and winning 
golden opinions on every side, when — he enter- 
tained Booker Washington at dinner at the 
White House. 

It has been widely remarked that, in the 
light of his present knowledge, neither party 
to the incident would repeat it were he to live 
the same period over. I do not believe that any 
one has authority to make such a statement. 
Certainly neither participant has any apology 
to offer on grounds of propriety or feels the 

217 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



slightest compunction or regret on moral 
grounds. Mr. Washington is one of the men 
whom President Roosevelt most admires, and 
whom he is proudest to number among his 
friends. They meet on terms of frank equality, 
except inasmuch as the presidential office itself 
confers a special dignity upon its occupant 
which all patriotic Americans recognize. The 
most that a commentator could claim in deroga- 
tion of the dinner incident is that things which 
are right in themselves are sometimes inexpe- 
dient because the conditions are not ripe for 
them. 

I happen to know that this affair was not 
of Mr. Washington's seeking. He had been 
sent for because the President wished to con- 
sult him on a special subject. Realizing that 
any needless publicity given to his relations 
with the President might lay him open to the 
suspicion of having political ends to serve and 
thus interfere with his educational work, he 
wished to avoid newspaper mention of his visits 
to the capital as far as possible. To that end 
one of his friends came to me in his behalf for 
advice as to how he could get into and out of 
the city and make his brief call at the White 
House without meeting any reporters. I sug- 

218 



WASHINGTON DINNER 



gested a plan which worked admirably as far 
as it went, but failed at its final stage because 
we could not very well make the President a 
party to it. 

Mr. Washington escaped the dreaded inter- 
viewers, but fell a victim to the routine of the 
executive mansion. It was a custom, devised 
for the convenience of the local press, to fur- 
nish to the doorkeepers the names of all guests 
received by the President out of office hours, 
and the doorkeepers communicated this list to 
any reporter who called in the evening. The 
uniform practise was followed in this instance, 
and the next morning's Washington Post con- 
tained a two-line paragraph, in an obscure place 
at the bottom of an inside page: "Booker T. 
Washington, of Tuskegee, Ala., dined with the 
President last evening." These facts appear 
here for the first time in print, because I feel 
that their correct statement is only just to both 
parties to the dinner episode. It was highly 
creditable to Mr. Washington that he did noth- 
ing to promote, but everything in his power to 
prevent, the exploitation of the honor shown 
him; and no more contemptible slander was 
ever cast upon the President than the charge 
that he arranged the whole business for polit- 

219 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ical effect, in order to hold the rank and file of 
the negro vote in spite of his deposal of sundry 
leaders. 

Had the perfunctory announcement I have 
quoted been never so widely copied, but allowed 
to stand without comment, no trouble would 
have resulted. The South has only itself — or 
its torrential journalism — to thank for the com- 
motion aroused among the negroes by the news. 
Mr. Washington was not the only negro who 
had enjoyed the hospitalities of the White 
House. Moreover, Mr. Roosevelt was the first 
Republican President since the civil war, not 
excepting Mr. Hayes, who had gone vigor- 
ously into the work of restoring the South to 
its heritage of full membership in the Union, 
with due regard for the wish of the superior 
race to rule. He was a Caucasian to the tips 
of his fingers. He was of Southern ancestry 
on his mother's side, and proud of it. Having 
been still in pinafores when Richmond fell, no 
bitterness lurked in his soul for the Confeder- 
ates of forty years ago. He was hoping to mark 
his administration in history by leaving the 
South politically regenerated; this stood, in 
fact, first among the ambitions he cherished for 
his purely domestic policy. No man could 

220 



UPROAR IN THE SOUTH 

have been more ideally adapted for the work 
he had in view, if the people for whom he was 
laboring had let him carry out his plans in his 
own way. 

They did not. A few hysterical Southern 
newspapers took up the subject of the Wash- 
ington dinner as if it had been intended for a 
challenge, instead of a mere incident of the 
usual routine of life at the White House. They 
began by declaring that this one act had set at 
naught every good thing the President had done 
in the South; that it proved him a hypocrite 
in his pretensions of sympathy with the South- 
ern people; that it had raised a sectional bar- 
rier which could not now be removed till an- 
other administration had been installed at the 
seat of government; that henceforth the peo- 
ple of the South were warned that Roosevelt- 
ism "meant nigger supremacy as surely as 
Grantism did"; and so forth. Some of the 
clergy echoed this silly chatter, and mixed poli- 
tics and sectionalism with their religious 
teachings. 

Even Mrs. Roosevelt was not spared; for 
a long time I kept on my desk as a curios- 
ity an illustration of a stripe of chivalry for 
which the higher latitudes have no room ex- 

221 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



cept in the hospitals — a cartoon representing 
the President and his wife at table, his face 
wearing a broad smile of delight while she 
assiduously pressed dainties upon a hideous 
black savage seated between them. This, I am 
informed, was suppressed soon after its issue, 
when an attempt was made to circulate it gra- 
tuitously in a political campaign, but the better 
element in the local Democratic management 
rebelled at the idea of using such weapons. 

Of course, though intelligent negroes of the 
Washington type were not thrown off their bal- 
ance by all this upheaval among the whites of 
the South, it could have only one effect upon 
the ignorant and impressionable element. They 
saw in it a sign that a second Lincoln had 
come to the rescue of their race — that as the 
great emancipator had stricken the shackles 
from their bodies, so his successor had broken 
through the wall of color caste and put them 
upon social equality with their white neigh- 
bors, which they would only have to assert 
thereafter in order to compel recognition. 
Washington himself had the good sense to pass 
the whole matter by without a word beyond his 
usual counsels to his people, of patience, for- 
bearance, gentleness, persistence in well-doing. 

222 



ADVICE FROM ALL SIDES 

The President made no public utterance what- 
ever, and in private conversation with his 
friends showed no anger, but only pity for the 
folly of a few hotheads which was bound to 
bring trouble in its train for the sane and sober 
majority. 

The White House mails, however, were 
flooded with correspondence on the subject. 
So-called friends wrote to urge the President 
to take the South at its word and give it negro 
supremacy with a vengeance from that day for- 
ward; others admonished him that the uproar 
had been raised by Southern politicians with a 
design of frightening decent Democrats out of 
accepting office at his hands thereafter, and 
advised that he avoid humiliation by building 
up a white Republican organization through- 
out the South. Anonymous scrawls served 
notice on him that he must never attempt to 
set his foot on Southern soil again for the rest 
of his term, and that he must keep all mem- 
bers of his family in the North also, if he 
would save himself and them from insult or 
worse. 

These letters, friendly, unfriendly and in- 
different, went together into the waste-basket. 
The President changed not a tittle of his pro- 
1(5 223 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



gram in response to them. He had begun by 
appointing to a Federal judgeship in Alabama, 
on Booker Washington's advice, Ex-Governor 
Thomas G. Jones, a Democrat, an ex-Confed- 
erate, and a citizen of the highest personal 
worth and honor. He had followed this with 
the choice of Edgar S. Wilson, a white Demo- 
crat of recognized position, for marshal of the 
northern district of Mississippi. 

He had no backward step to take, and he 
went on doing as before, selecting his South- 
ern appointees by the same standards, and meet- 
ing nowhere a rebuff from a high-minded and 
educated white Democrat. Men like Robert 
C. Lee in Mississippi and Thomas R. Roulhac 
in Alabama were not frightened by the pass- 
ing flurry. It was soon plain that the half- 
civilized prophets who had forecast the down- 
fall of Mr. Roosevelt's policy did not know the 
better people of their own section. He visited 
Nashville, Tenn., to assist in welcoming home 
Vice-Governor Luke E. Wright from the 
Philippine Islands; but, beyond a few cat-calls 
and growls which greeted his carriage in one 
of the slums of the city, no unpleasant mani- 
festation was made in any quarter. He went 
to Charleston at the invitation of leading citi- 

224 



COURTEOUS TREATMENT 



zens to present a sword to his late comrade- 
in-arms, Major Micah Jenkins; nothing oc- 
curred to mar the decorum of the occasion or 
to indicate any decline in the local sentiment 
of respect for the chief magistrate. A hunt- 
ing expedition was organized for his benefit in 
Mississippi, and neither there nor on the jour- 
neys back and forth was there any show of hos- 
tile feeling. In all these instances members of 
the suite who accompanied him thought they 
discovered a subdued quality in the popular en- 
thusiasm by comparison with other receptions 
of presidential parties in the South, but this 
was far from being a serious drawback, and 
there was certainly not enough of a change to 
dampen the enjoyment of the President himself. 
A fresh outbreak of excitement occurred 
after the Charleston visit, when, at the end of 
a long inquiry into the merits of the respective 
candidates, the President appointed Dr. Will- 
iam D. Crum, a colored physician, collector 
of customs at that port. Crum was a citizen 
of character and standing. He was an edu- 
cated man, and at the head of his profession 
among his own people. The whites all spoke 
well of him, especially of his unobtrusiveness 
and generally self-respecting attitude. Any 

225 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



note bearing his indorsement was readily dis- 
counted at the banks. He was prominent in 
the local colored charities. In every way he 
ranked as the leading negro in his part of the 
South. The white men who had most vigor- 
ously pressed the opposition to him were of 
the old school of Southern Republicans with 
whom the President was wholly out of sym- 
pathy. 

In other parts of the South— notably in 
Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi — Mr. 
Roosevelt had commissioned or recommissioned 
a few negroes of the higher type to offices where 
least objection could be raised by the white 
people. These appointments had met some- 
times with pronounced approval, sometimes 
with a discreet reserve, always with a sensible 
recognition of the situation. Compared with 
other Republican Presidents, he had made a 
very sparing use of his prerogative, measured 
by the percentage of negroes in the local Re- 
publican contingent. In South Carolina there 
was a paucity of offices that carried any dignity 
with them. Practically the list consisted of 
the postmastership and the collectorship of cus- 
toms at Charleston, the district attorneyship and 
the collectorship of internal revenue. The cen- 

226 



CHARLESTON COLLECTORSHIP 



sus of the State showed nearly 20,000 more 
negroes than whites of voting age in the popu- 
lation. One office in the four of any conse- 
quence, therefore, seemed to the President not 
an undue proportion to be accredited to the 
negroes, even admitting the wide prevalence of 
illiteracy among them. The office which a 
negro could hold presumptively with least lia- 
bility to offend his white neighbors was the col- 
lectorship of customs. The others would be 
likely to bring him into bodily contact with 
the whites; the routine duties of this one could 
be administered through a deputy and subordi- 
nates, the collector himself occupying an inner 
room of the custom-house. Here he could read 
his mail, dictate letters, revise and sign docu- 
ments prepared for him by trained clerks; the 
port's business, in short, might be transacted 
from year's end to year's end without any out- 
sider's discovering whether the collector was 
tall or short, good-looking or ugly, deaf, dumb, 
blind or normal, white, black or copper-colored. 
Hardly, however, had the report gone forth 
that the President intended appointing Crum, 
before the White House was deluged with let- 
ters and telegrams and marked newspapers from 
a little group of Charlestonians who assumed, 

227 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

after the Tooley Street precedent, to speak for 
all the people. Chief among the remonstrants 
was one who asserted that the President during 
his visit to the Charleston exposition in the 
spring of 1902 had pledged his word to three 
prominent white citizens that he would never 
appoint a negro to office in that city. The 
fallacy of this charge was, of course, perfectly 
plain to every one in the President's confidence, 
who knew what plan he was consistently carry- 
ing out in the South and what relation the 
South Carolina offices bore to this. But set- 
ting aside all considerations of the insult in- 
tended, Mr. Roosevelt wrote to one of the trio 
concerned: 

"How any one could have gained the idea 
that I had said that I would not appoint repu- 
table and upright colored men to office when 
objection was made to them on account of their 
color, I confess I am wholly unable to under- 
stand. At the time of my visit to Charleston 
last spring I had made, and since that time I 
have made, a number of such appointments 
from several States in which there is a consid- 
erable colored population. . . . These appoint- 
ments of colored men have in no State made 
more than a small proportion of the total num- 

228 



DOOR OF HOPE 



ber of appointments. I am unable to see how 
I can legitimately be asked to make an excep- 
tion for South Carolina. 

"So far as I legitimately can I shall always 
endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feel- 
ings of the people of each locality, but I can not 
consent to take the position that the door of 
hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut 
upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely 
upon the grounds of race or color." 

Before dropping this subject I can not for- 
bear citing a few facts which throw an inter- 
esting side-light upon the commotion raised in 
the South by the President's attitude toward the 
negro. Elsewhere some mention is made of the 
Indianola incident, in which a mob in a Mis- 
sissippi village drove an unoffending colored 
woman out of her place as postmaster because 
the white citizens could not bear to receive their 
mail from the hands of a negress. The Post- 
master-General closed the office, thereby com- 
pelling its patrons to send several miles to an- 
other office for their mail. The messenger em- 
ployed for this service, and paid by the patrons 
out of their own purses, is a negro; so that their 
mail actually comes to them now from a pair of 
black hands, the only difference being that the 

229 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 

hands are those of a privately hired man instead 
of a woman with a Government commission. 

A young Southerner of blue blood, good 
education, and generally progressive ideas, and 
a warm friend and admirer of Mr. Roosevelt's 
withal, said to me one day: "I love that man; 
I would do anything in the world for him, 
follow him anywhere. But the one thing in 
his career which I shall never get over is the 
Booker Washington incident. Understand me : 
I do not disparage Washington's work — I ap- 
preciate it as much as you do. I admit all that 
you say of his personal worth. He has been in 
my mother's parlor, and invited to sit down 
there. I don't know that I should have had any 
feeling about the President's asking him to a 
lunch or dinner by themselves. But to invite 
him to the table with ladies — that is what no 
Southerner can brook!" 

But last and best, note this: In the fall of 
1903 there was a gathering of bishops and clergy 
of the Protestant Episcopal ministry in Wash- 
ington to celebrate an important event in the 
history of the diocese. The President had con- 
sented to take part in the ceremonies, and in 
his turn gave a reception at the White House 
to the visiting delegates. He had no share in 

230 



SUBTLE DISTINCTIONS 



making out the list of invitations, but left all 
such details to the managers of the affair, who 
were largely Southern clergymen. Among 
those who responded were a negro archdeacon 
from North Carolina, with his wife, and the 
negro rector of a flourishing parish in Mary- 
land. All met on an outwardly equal footing 
under the President's roof; all joined in par- 
taking of the refreshments spread for them, 
eating from the same set of plates and drinking 
from the same set of glasses, some sitting and 
some standing, but with no social or race lines 
apparently drawn between any classes in the 
assemblage. Yet the Southern ministers and 
bishops did not seem to be at all disconcerted, 
and not a Southern newspaper raised its protest 
at their share in this crime against Caucasian 
civilization! 

Is it wonderful that even so discerning a 
mind as the President's is unable to grasp the 
subtle distinctions which his social censors have 
tried to force upon him? 



231 



CHAPTER XIV 

CAPITAL AND LABOR 

Combination in both fields— Labor unions and the civil service— 
The Miller case — Overlooked facts in the coal arbitration — 
Things a demagogue would not have done. 

IT is no uncommon thing to hear Theodore 
Roosevelt denounced as a demagogue because 
of his attitude toward what is known as the 
labor problem. Now, the term demagogue is 
rather hard to define. To my mind it seems 
to mean a man of higher intelligence bending 
his judgment hypocritically to the passing 
whims of the mob in order to win its favor. 
Mr. Roosevelt's views on labor questions, how- 
ever, are a necessary outgrowth from his funda- 
mental opinions on economics and politics at 
large. This statement, which seems only his 
due, I offer with the greater cheerfulness be- 
cause there is no subject of difference between 
us which makes the sparks fly more actively 
when we get into a discussion of it. 

I have already spoken of Mr. Roosevelt's 
232 



EQUAL RIGHTS 



unqualified belief in combination and organ- 
ization as a means of accomplishing results in 
public fields of activity. What he believes in 
for politics, for religion, for trade, for legisla- 
tion, he believes in equally for labor. He has 
never discouraged combinations among capital- 
ists except where they have violated the law, 
and has advocated no laws of repression except 
such as would prevent inhumanity in the treat- 
ment of some helpless class; by parity of reason- 
ing he not only has not discouraged, but has 
freely encouraged, combinations among wage- 
workers, though always drawing the line sharply 
at the point where, in his opinion, they tended 
to substitute tyranny for fair play or lawless- 
ness for honorable self-assertion. The diffi- 
culty of locating that point in certain cases 
leaves a considerable margin for ethical debate 
and criticism. To that extent Mr. Roosevelt 
has sometimes laid himself open to attack on 
the score of misjudgment; but I have never 
heard his sincerity of motive successfully as- 
sailed. 

Take the case of the typographical unions 
and their kindred organizations for an illus- 
tration. As Civil-Service Commissioner, it was 
his constant endeavor to have the Government 

233 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Printing Office brought under the merit sys- 
tem. A good many opponents of the plan re- 
minded him of the difficulty of dealing with a 
mechanical trade, so largely governed by com- 
binations, in the same way as with clerical 
labor, which was unorganized. Mr. Roosevelt 
brushed these objections aside. The unions, 
he declared, ought to be the best possible friends 
of the merit system if their claim were honest 
that they existed for the improvement of their 
craft. The requirement of a merit test for 
admission to the Government Printing Office 
would tend to raise the standard of public serv- 
ice in the typographic and allied arts, and he 
should ask the most expert craftsmen to help 
him in his effort, even to the extent of prepar- 
ing the rules for examining applicants. When 
warned that this meant the permanent control 
of the office by the unions, he answered that, 
if the Government obtained better service as a 
consequence, he could not see what question 
could be raised as to the element in control; 
but that if an attempt were ever made — which 
he did not expect — to exercise such control im- 
properly, it could and would be checked at 
once. 

An appeal was accordingly made to the best 

234 



MILLER CASE 



practical printers within reach to lend a hand 
at the organization of the office on a merit 
basis. It did not succeed at once, and the 
formal classification was delayed till Mr. Roose- 
velt had been some time separated from the 
Civil-Service Commission. When the change 
was made, however, it was on the lines he 
had laid down. The first effect, as hao 1 
been predicted, was to establish the unions 
firmly as the dominant force in the office. Prac- 
tically this made no difference in existing con- 
ditions, for the printers, binders, engineers, etc., 
who in the past had been appointed to places 
there as a matter of political favor, had always 
been either members of the unions or candidates 
for membership; no politician of influence 
enough to command such patronage had dared 
go outside of the unions and their waiting lists 
in choosing its beneficiaries. 

Matters went along smoothly enough till the 
Miller case came up last summer. William 
A. Miller, assistant foreman in the bindery 
branch of the office, was a non-union man. He 
had formerly belonged to the union, but had 
been expelled because, in defiance of the rules 
of the union, he had pointed the way for the 
Government's use of cheaper methods of manu- 

235 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



facture, thus effecting a saving estimated at 
$8,000 a year. From the day of their split the 
union opened a systematic warfare upon him 
with the purpose of driving him from his place. 
It succeeded at last by threatening to strike 
unless he were removed. 

Miller's protest was carried to President 
Roosevelt, who, on the facts as presented — that 
Miller was a competent workman, but had been 
dismissed from public employ because the union 
had expelled him — ordered his reinstatement in 
a letter which also said: "There is no objection 
to the employees of the Government Printing 
Office constituting themselves into a union if 
they so desire; but no rules or resolutions of 
that union can be permitted to override the 
laws of the United States, which it is my sworn 
duty to enforce." In a later communication 
the President quoted the judgment of the An- 
thracite Coal Strike Commission, "that no per- 
son shall be refused employment or in any way 
be discriminated against on account of mem- 
bership or non-membership in any labor organ- 
ization," and added: "I heartily approved of 
this award and judgment by the commission 
appointed by me, which itself included a mem- 
ber of a labor union. This commission was 

236 



OATH OR RESIGNATION 

dealing with labor organizations working for 
private employers. It is, of course, mere ele- 
mentary decency to require that all the Gov- 
ernment departments shall be handled in ac- 
cordance with the principle thus clearly and 
fearlessly enunciated." 

The union yielded the point, but in a dis- 
satisfied and resentful spirit. Rumors reached 
the President's ears that there would be a gen- 
eral strike presently throughout the Govern- 
ment Printing Office as an expression of sym- 
pathy with the defeated binders. His response 
to that was an order that every employee in the 
big establishment should be regularly sworn 
into the service. Those who did not care to be 
sworn had the privilege of resigning. All sub- 
scribed to the oath, which wiped out the last 
danger of an embarrassing revolt. 

To clinch this business, Mr. Roosevelt ac- 
cepted an invitation to visit Syracuse, N. Y., 
on Labor Day and review the parade of the 
labor unions of that city and the surrounding 
towns. It was an extraordinary compliment 
for a President of the United States to pay to 
a single community and a single element in 
that community; the invitation was undoubt- 
edly accepted for the double purpose of show- 

237 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ing that the Government Printing-Office epi- 
sode must not be interpreted as indicative of 
the President's hostility to organized labor in 
its proper field, and also as a challenge to cer- 
tain loud-mouthed agitators who had declared 
that because of the stand he had taken in the 
Miller case the working people of the country 
would thenceforth turn their backs upon him. 
The visit was a success. No such labor parade 
had ever been witnessed in the neighborhood, 
and the enthusiasm of the paraders was unques- 
tionable. 

The binders' union now began to attack 
Miller from a new quarter. One reason why 
he had been driven out of their organization, 
they declared, was that he was morally worth- 
less; and they insisted that his record, if 
searched, would show him to be a bigamist and 
otherwise an unfit associate for respectable men 
and women. The reservation of this consid- 
eration till the other had been disposed of was 
a shrewd but not very reputable bit of tac- 
tics. Its purpose was revealed by a preamble 
and resolutions adopted by the Central Labor 
Union of Washington, D. C, and mailed broad- 
cast to labor unions all over the country, in 
which, among other things, it was declared that 

238 



CONFUSING THE ISSUES 



"whereas the President of the United States has 
seen fit to reinstate W. A. Miller . . . notwith- 
standing the overwhelming evidence of his 
moral turpitude, and has also committed him- 
self to the policy of the open shop, ... the 
order of the President can not be regarded in 
any but an unfriendly light," and organized 
labor everywhere was "urged to petition the 
President of the United States to modify his 
order of no discrimination, and order W. A. 
Miller's dismissal from the Government serv- 
ice." 

Here, as will be seen, an effort was de- 
liberately made to confuse the public mind by 
merging two wholly separate issues. The 
President had never passed upon Miller's pri- 
vate morals, for no such subject had been pre- 
sented to him for adjudication. He had be- 
fore him only the question whether a man who 
was trying to earn his living at a legitimate 
trade, and the quality of whose craftsmanship 
had not been assailed, should be ousted from 
Government employ for no better reason than 
that he was not a member of a labor union. 
The dragging up of Miller's alleged unlawful 
domestic relations was absolutely foreign to the 
matter in hand. It was either an afterthought 
17 239 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



on the part of his accusers, or else had been 
designedly kept back for the purpose of en- 
trapping the President. The resolutions of the 
Central Labor Union, if accepted at their face 
value by other unions and the public, would 
convict the President of having wittingly stood 
sponsor for a man of bad character for the sake 
of putting an affront upon organized labor, 
when nothing could have been further from 

the truth. 

Many a man would have been so disgusted 
by such double-dealing as to throw over all 
efforts to deal courteously or even considerately 
with its perpetrators. Mr. Roosevelt, on the 
contrary, feeling that a few schemers should 
not be allowed to damage the cause of a mul- 
titude of deserving men, has maintained as 
friendly an attitude as before toward the great 
body of workingmen. Those who have tried 
to make political capital of the Miller incident 
would be interested in reading a correspond- 
ence between the President and a timid friend 
who was much concerned over his future. The 
friend adjured him to throw Miller over- 
board on any pretext, as otherwise the whole 
force in the Government Printing Office would 
go out on strike, and this would complicate 

240 



QUICK WORK 



the politics of the situation dreadfully. Mr. 
Roosevelt's answer contained this rather plain 
English: "Of course I will not for one moment 
submit to dictation by the labor unions any 
more than by the trusts, no matter what the 
effect on the presidential election may be. . . . 
I will proceed upon the only plan possible for 
a self-respecting American President, and treat 
each man on his merits as a man. The labor 
unions shall have a square deal, and the cor- 
porations shall have a square deal, and, in addi- 
tion, all private citizens shall have a square 
deal. ... If those labor-union men strike, not 
one of them will do another stroke of Govern- 
ment work while I am President." 

The same spirit was shown in the case of 
the Arizona mining strike riots in 1903, when 
the Governor notified the President of the in- 
ability of the civil authorities to control the 
mob. Within thirty minutes from the receipt 
of this telegram a detachment of United States 
troops was on its way to the scene of disorder. 

The anthracite-coal strike illustrated in 
still another fashion Mr. Roosevelt's method 
of meeting a labor crisis. That the crisis ex- 
isted could not be doubted by any one who 
saw the letters and telegrams which came to 

241 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



the White House from the Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, the Mayor of New York, the Mayor 
of Chicago, the Mayor of Detroit, the New 
York Board of Trade, the managers of mills 
and factories, and others. The remedies sug- 
gested were various. Not a few eminent men 
of usually sound and conservative judgment 
had been carried away by the idea of seizing 
the mines under the Government's right of 
eminent domain. Indeed, if the whole story 
were written, ex-Senator Hill's socialistic plank 
in the New York Democratic platform of 1902 
would be found to have been no isolated freak 
of sentiment. 

One man of means and influence wrote: 
"The coal strike must end at once. If the 
operators persist in refusing to arbitrate, they 
will strengthen the socialists in their efforts 
to secure Government control." Another tele- 
graphed: "If the disputants will not themselves 
find some way of supplying, without delay, 
what is really a necessary of life, some way will 
have to be found to make them!" A prom- 
inent citizen of New York, whose name is 
known all over the world, said, in the course 
of a long written review of the situation: 
"Within a month coal will be as much of a 

242 



NO DEMAGOGUE 



necessity for all the inhabitants of the States 
north of the Mason and Dixon line as food or 
milk or water, and the persons who stand in 
the way of its supply at reasonable rates will 
be the enemies of all the people, with a crimi- 
nality nothing short of murder." 

A demagogue in Mr. Roosevelt's place 
would have listened to only one side of the 
quarrel between the operators and the miners; 
if he had interfered at all, it would have been 
by convening Congress in extraordinary session 
in the midst of a political campaign. In these 
circumstances, clear thinking and unbiased 
action would have been well-nigh impossible, 
for every member of either house would have 
come to Washington charged with admoni- 
tions from the labor organizations at his home 
to stand by the coal-field workers in their 
struggle. A man who was not actually a dema- 
gogue, but merely timid, would have waited 
till Congress assembled and shifted to its shoul- 
ders the responsibility of dealing with the 
strike; but Congress would not assemble till 
December, and by that time the whole North- 
ern country would have made its plunge into 
a winter without fuel. 

The step taken by the President in this 
243 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



crisis was a bold one. He had no more prece- 
dent for it than he had the next year for his 
Panama policy. It is an open secret that most 
of the lawyers and public men with whom he 
counseled advised him that his authority to 
organize a board of arbitration was at least 
doubtful, if indeed it had any foundation what- 
ever. What assurance had he that Congress 
would sanction his action, and vote the money 
for the expenses of the arbitration? How could 
he so choose the membership of the board as 
to satisfy both sides, so that neither would re- 
fuse to submit its case? Finally, when the 
arbitrators had finished their work, how could 
he make certain that all parties would carry 
out their obligations under the aw'ard in good 
faith? 

Instead of convening Congress, he called 
together the leaders of both the warring ele- 
ments. He reasoned, and soundly, that what- 
ever all these men agreed to, Congress could 
not refuse to ratify on any specious ground of 
partizanship, and he would have the sanction 
of the law after the fact if not in advance of it. 
The membership of the board should be de- 
scribed, even if not personally named, by the 
same gathering. And before the first decisive 
. 244 



SOCIOLOGIST" DEFINED 



move were made in any direction, he would 
pledge all the parties in interest to an honest ful- 
filment of the decree of the arbitrators, whether 
for or against themselves. This plan he carried 
out to the letter. Of course, he did not escape 
criticism. A part of the press which was al- 
ready committed against any concession to the 
miners, right or wrong, charged him with the 
usurpation of extra-constitutional powers; oth- 
ers attacked, some humorously and some seri- 
ously, the personnel of the arbitration com- 
mission. For example, the representatives of 
the operators and of the miners had jointly 
decided that the commission should comprise 
an army or navy engineer, a mining engineer, 
a judge of a United States court, a sociologist, 
and a man who had been actively engaged in 
mining and selling coal and was familiar with 
the business. The rest of this descriptive list 
was easy enough to select, but the sociologist 
presented a puzzle. Who would come under 
that head? The Century Dictionary defined 
a sociologist as "one who treats of or devotes 
himself to the study of sociology," and soci- 
ology as "the science which investigates the 
laws regulating human society" and treats of 
"the progress of civilization." 

245 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



It seemed, for various reasons, undesirable 
to load down so practical a commission with 
a mere theorist or doctrinaire, and the profes- 
sional sociologists who actually mixed with 
men and studied their subject at first hand were 
few and far between. So the President adopted 
a definition of his own, and laid his hand at 
once upon the man whom he believed it best 
fitted. This was E. E. Clark, a railway conduc- 
tor. If any person in any occupation had had 
an opportunity to study humankind in groups, 
and under nearly all conditions calculated to 
bring out their peculiarities, it was one in Mr. 
Clark's calling. Apart from this considera- 
tion, moreover, Mr. Clark bore the name of a 
fair-minded man. Above all, he was an officer 
of one of the leading trade-unions in the coun- 
try, with a membership of exceptional charac- 
ter and intelligence, the Brotherhood of Rail- 
way Conductors. This was the shrewd feature 
of the whole affair: whatever report Mr. Clark 
concurred in was bound to be conservative of 
the rights of the unions, and hence acceptable 
to organized labor everywhere. 

So, while newspaper writers and stump ora- 
tors were poking fun at the President for his 
peculiar application of the term "sociologist," 

246 



ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION 



he laughed with them outwardly, but at them 
in secret; for he knew what he was about, and 
they did not. Subsequent events, as we have 
seen, have vindicated his wisdom. The report 
of the commission, which was not signed and 
delivered till it had been put into a shape where 
every member could unite in it, not only settled 
this particular strike, but fixed a point of de- 
parture for the treatment of any labor questions 
with which the Government might be called 
upon to deal thereafter. 

It was hardly the act of a demagogue— 
that visit of Police Commissioner Roosevelt to 
Clarendon Hall in New York during a par- 
ticularly trying strike period to meet a body 
of representative workingmen. The police had 
been in more or less trouble with the restless 
element daily, and blood had flowed some- 
times when officers had interfered with the ef- 
forts of strikers to "persuade" their scab sub- 
stitutes to drop work. The commissioner had 
got tired of waiting for the difficulty to com- 
pose itself. He fancied that if all the facts 
were brought out by a good-tempered inquiry 
it might be possible for the city government 
to do something toward restoring quiet. So he 
arranged to have a talk with the strikers face 

247 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



to face. When he came to the hall he found 
— as one might have guessed — a group of men 
determined to get all they could and yield noth- 
ing. They had quite misinterpreted his friendly 
advance. Why should he, a politician, come 
among them at this juncture except to cajole 
them for votes? And if he was to have the 
votes, he should pay a handsome price for 
them. So they dragged out their grievances 
and paraded them before him, and when they 
saw that he was listening intently they played 
their second card — threats. 

A change passed over his face and manner. 
The appearance of sympathetic interest gave 
way, first to one of astonished curiosity, as if 
he were not sure that he had heard aright, and 
then to a settled expression of sternness. "Wait 
a moment!" he exclaimed, in a tone of com- 
mand that brought the proceedings to a sudden 
standstill. "We came together to try to under- 
stand each other better. I wanted to learn 
from your own lips what there really was be- 
hind your trouble with your employers. I be- 
gin to think that some of you have mistaken 
the purpose of my invitation. Remember this, 
please, before we go one step further: the man 
among you who advises or encourages violence 

248 



i 



OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS 



is the enemy of all. We shall have order in 
this place and peace in this city before we have 
anything else; and the police will preserve it. 
Now, if the air is clearer, we can go on." 

The men who had been talking brute force 
came down once more to reason. They were 
cowed; and their companions, instead of be- 
ing angry, cheered loudly the politician who 
wouldn't be bullied. 

Nor did it indicate a servile spirit when 
Commissioner Roosevelt made a speech of com- 
i mendation and congratulation to a roundsman 
whom he promoted for a specially good piece 
of work during the same season. There was 
much rioting in this officer's district. He was 
told to take six men and keep a certain line of 
street-railroad open. The mob had reached a 
point where it was sullen and dangerous; the 
roundsman therefore promptly took decisive 
measures — charged it, clubbing right and left, 
and, without giving it a moment's chance to 
rally, drove it in headlong flight, and kept the 
whole railroad line clear. He had won his 
promotion to a sergeancy by a deed which was 
military in its efficiency, and Mr. Roosevelt 
recognized the fact without a moment's hesi- 
tancy. 

249 



CHAPTER XV 

TRUSTS, TARIFF AND IMPERIALISM 

Why one corporation is sued and another not — Prudential value 
of publicity — Free-trader versus Republican — A Philippine 
forecast sustained — Tropical colonies and the flag. 

ABOUT the middle of February, 1902, Presi- 
dent Roosevelt authorized the prosecution of 
the Northern Securities Company for violation 
of the Sherman anti-trust law, because he was 
advised by Attorney-General Knox that there 
was a fair reason for believing that the courts 
would sustain this action. The United States 
Steel Corporation had been marked by the pub- 
lic as a probable target for this sort of attack; 
but it was not prosecuted, because the President 
was advised by the Attorney-General that a 
prosecution would probably not be sustained 
by the courts. 

Therein lies the whole story of Mr. Roose- 
velt's attitude toward the great trade and com- 
mercial combinations. The many explana- 
tions offered by contemporary writers might 

250 



ABSURD EXPLANATION 



be boiled down into two: (i) That he was try- 
ing to get even with sundry eminent capitalists 
who had criticized him; (2) that an attack on 
a Western combination would make votes for 
him among the farmers, while by lenity toward 
an Eastern combination he would keep on terms 
with certain New York capitalists whose friend- 
ship he needed. 

The idea that the President had figured out 
an intricate anti-trust scheme so as to use a 
Federal law as a club for his personal revenges 
and a staff for his political advancement was 
plainly absurd. In truth, his mind so works 
along straight lines and on known angles that 
his conclusions are easier to forecast than those 
of perhaps any other man in public life to- 
day. In his Minneapolis speech of Septem- 
ber 2, 1901, he said: "The vast individual and 
corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of 
capital, which have marked the development 
of our industrial system, create new condi- 
tions and necessitate a change from the old 
attitude of the State and the nation toward 
property. It is probably true that the large 
majority of the fortunes that now exist in this 
country have been amassed, not by injuring 
our people, but as an incident to the conferring 

251 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



of great benefit upon the community. There 
is but the scantiest justification for most of the 
outcry against the men of wealth as such; and 
it ought to be unnecessary to state that any 
appeal which directly or indirectly leads to 
suspicion and hatred among ourselves ... is 
an attack upon the fundamental properties of 
American citizenship. Our interests are at bot- 
tom common; in the long run we go up or go 
down together. Yet more and more is it evi- 
dent that the State, and if necessary the nation, 
has got to possess the right of supervision and 
control as regards the great corporations, which 
are its creatures; particularly as regards the 
great business combinations which derive a por- 
tion of their importance from the existence 
of some monopolistic tendencies. The right 
should be exercised with caution and self- 
restraint, but it should exist so that it may be 
invoked if the need arise." 

This was before he had any thought that 
he should be, for at least three or four years, 
in a position to recommend legislation or direct 
its enforcement. His first message to Congress 
after he became President contained phrases 
which practically echoed his Minneapolis 
speech. There was nothing in either utterance 

252 




Copyright, 1903, by Underwood & Underwood. 

SPEAKING TO THE PEOPLE FEOM A CAR PLATFORM. 



PUBLICITY DEMANDED 



to alarm investors in industrial corporations, 
provided these concerns were keeping within 
the law. If they were not, then they were fairly 
warned to readjust their business so as to bring 
it within the law, or find no fault if the ma- 
chinery of justice should overtake their enter- 
prises. 

It has, moreover, always been Mr. Roose- 
velt's belief that existing laws left untouched 
one evil which underlay all others — the secrecy 
with which the business of great combinations 
is conducted. The people, who have granted 
extraordinary privileges to certain concerns en- 
gaged in trade, have a right, he thinks, to know 
how those privileges are exercised. The Gov- 
ernment, charged by the people with the duty 
of regulating such concerns, has a right to know 
whether they are transgressing the laws enacted 
for their regulation. Or, as he has put it him- 
self: "Publicity can do no harm to the honest 
corporation, and we need not be overtender 
about sparing the dishonest corporation." 

Mr. Roosevelt's appeal to Congress for 
means with which to deal with the trusts was 
answered because it had public sentiment be- 
hind it. The three measures enacted were not 
very drastic in effect, and perhaps only tenta- 

253 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tive in purpose, but they furnished at least a 
basis for further action. A well-recognized 
source of trust aggrandizement has always been 
the favoritism shown to the great manufactur- 
ing combinations by the railroad companies 
that transport their material and products; so 
one of the new enactments was an amendment 
to the existing interstate commerce law against 
rebates, whereby the receiver as well as the 
giver of a rebate is to be punished. Another 
provided for the special expedition of the anti- 
trust suits instituted by the Attorney-General 
in the courts; the third created the Department 
of Commerce, with authority, through its bu- 
reau of corporations, to procure for the Presi- 
dent the information he desired about the busi- 
ness affairs of corporate combinations, leaving 
to his discretion the amount of this information 
he shall give to the public. 

The whole trust policy of the President in 
a nutshell is: Enforce such laws as we have 
now because they are laws, and lay the founda- 
tion for the just enforcement of these, and for 
their modification or improvement wherever 
necessary, by requiring the great industrial 
combinations to tell us just what they are do- 
ing. It is a simple code. The humblest mind 

254 



UNWRITTEN HISTORY 



can grasp it, and no hidden meaning or motive 
lurks behind its plain expression. 

I can not leave this subject of trusts and the 
President's attitude toward them without tell- 
ing a bit of inside history which I believe 
has never before seen print. In the winter of 
1901-02 Andrew Carnegie carried into execu- 
tion a long-cherished scheme for establishing 
an educational foundation which, without be- 
ing itself a national university, should supple- 
ment, under the auspices of the National Gov- 
ernment, the work of all universities by afford- 
ing means for the development of certain lines 
of scholarly research far past the point to which 
any existing resources could carry them. The 
idea appealed to the President strongly when 
Mr. Carnegie laid it before him. It was the 
benefactor's purpose to present his fund of 
$10,000,000, invested in first-lien bonds of the 
United States Steel Corporation, directly to the 
Government, the proceeds to be administered 
by the President, certain members of the Cabi- 
net, and a board of directors comprising sev- 
eral men of eminence in scientific and educa- 
tional fields. 

With his usual enthusiasm for any project 
that combines patriotism and generosity, Mr. 

18 255 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Roosevelt gave his hearty approval to this plan, 
and it was on the very eve of going through as 
originally designed, when a certain long-headed 
lawyer and warm friend of the President was 
brought into consultation and at once called a 
halt. 

"Do you realize what you are doing, Mr. 
President?" he demanded. "If you accept this 
endowment for the Government of the United 
States, you make the Government, and inci- 
dentally your Administration, an underwriter 
of the premier securities of the Steel Trust!" 

The President saw the point, which till then 
had escaped his notice, obscured by his admira- 
tion of the magnificence of the gift and the 
public benefit to be derived from it. Mr. Car- 
negie was sent for, and a readjustment agreed 
upon, whereby the trusteeship of the fund was 
vested in an independent board. All that the 
people at large knew at the time was that a 
hitch had occurred in the arrangements pro- 
viding for the administration of the Carnegie 
fund. In some quarters it was given out by 
the wiseacres that the Attorney-General had 
rendered an opinion that the United States 
could not lawfully accept such a gift. That is 
absurd. Gifts to the United States are not so 

256 



IN A FREE-TRADE CLUB 

very uncommon, and an act of Congress settles 
all details. But the awkwardness of the posi- 
tion in which the President would have found 
himself if he had sent a message to Congress 
recommending the acceptance of this particu- 
lar gift, and the difficulty of explaining to his 
critics that there was no connection between his 
attitude on this subject and Mr. Knox's dis- 
crimination between combinations in the en- 
forcement of the anti-trust law, will be appre- 
ciated by the reader without comment. 

In or about the year 1881, with the economic 
doctrines emphasized by his university still 
fresh in his mind, Mr. Roosevelt became a 
member of the Free-Trade Club in New York. 
He found there congenial associations, the club 
consisting largely of educated young men like 
himself, full of public spirit and ambitious for 
a share in the world's activities. He remained 
a member through his entire legislative career. 
He was still a member when he headed his 
State delegation to the national convention that 
nominated Blaine for President; for, although 
nominally a Republican, he owed the support 
of his peculiar constituency not so much to any 
party connection as to his subordination of all 

257 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



partizan considerations to the single standard 
of respectability in public life. 

But when the time came for him to decide 
whether to remain the first independent in the 
United States and do what he could in that 
character, or to exchange a part of his inde- 
pendence for an affiliation which would ulti- 
mately open to him a larger field, he took a 
candid inventory of assets. If he became a 
straight-out party man, his free-trade interests 
would have to go the way of his mugwump 
friendships and his freedom to oppose on the 
stump any candidate whom he distrusted. To 
his mind, this phase of the question was eco- 
nomic rather than moral. It involved no choice 
between right and wrong, but only between two 
paths leading to the same ultimate goal — an 
unfettered commerce: the protective policy 
meant going around by a longer road and living 
by the way; the free-trade policy meant a short 
cut, with the rewards and the subsistence all 
at the end of the journey. 

His choice made, Mr. Roosevelt sent in his 
resignation as a member of the club. This was 
in 1885. His message contained neither an 
apology for the step he was taking, nor any 
trumped-up excuses for his original member- 

258 



TARIFF REFORMER 



ship. It was a simple, straightforward state- 
ment that he was "a Republican first, a free- 
trader afterward." In this matter, as in the 
larger conflicts between the enthusiasms of his 
youth and the teachings of practical experi- 
ence, he has come, with the passage of years, 
to take a more sympathetic view of his party's 
attitude. 

He still remains, however, a tariff reformer 
within Republican lines. Protection as a pol- 
icy commands his support; but it never has 
held, and never can hold, the place of a fetish 
with him. It must always be a means to an 
end, not an end in itself. I do not believe he 
would condemn as a heresy the honest belief of 
a Republican that the party would be better 
without the protection clause in its creed. I 
do not think he would resent a Republican pro- 
posal to supplant a prohibitory tariff with a 
tariff for revenue in which the protective ele- 
ment shall "be incidental only. But that does 
not mean that he would assent to its wisdom, 
considering always time and occasion. As he 
has sunk his own preferences in so many re- 
spects for the sake of keeping at one with his 
party, he regards it as only fair that others 
should be willing to do the same. "We all go 

259 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



up or all go down together" is a favorite polit- 
ical maxim of his, meaning that the first thought 
of each member of the party should be for the 
party as a whole and not for any individual 

interests. 

No measure of thoroughgoing tariff re- 
vision, for the sake of reducing the burdens of 
the people directly, has come before Mr. Roose- 
velt as President to put the fundaments of his 
economic faith to the test. The only forms in 
which the question has arisen have been projects 
for reciprocity arrangements to enlarge our 
commerce, which he has commended for general 
business reasons; a special reciprocity treaty 
with Cuba, which he urged as well because our 
national honor demands it; and proposals to use 
tariff reduction as a weapon against the trusts. 
On this last head, in a speech delivered at Cin- 
cinnati in September, 1902, he said: 

"A remedy much advocated at the moment 
is to take off the tariff from all articles which 
are made by trusts. To do this it will be neces- 
sary first to define trusts. The language com- 
monly used by the advocates of this method im- 
plies that they mean all articles made by large 
corporations, and that the changes in tariff are 
to be made with punitive intent toward these 

260 



TARIFF AND TRUSTS 



large corporations. Of course, if the tariff is 
to be changed in order to punish them, it should 
be changed so as to punish those that do ill, not 
merely those that are prosperous. If in any 
case the tariff is found to foster a monopoly 
which does ill, why, of course, no protectionist 
would object to a modification of the tariff 
sufficient to remedy the evil. But in very few 
cases does the so-called trust really monopolize 
the market. Take any very big corporation 
which controls, say, something over half the 
products of a given industry. Surely, in re- 
arranging the schedules affecting such a big 
corporation, it would be necessary to consider 
the interests of its smaller competitors which 
control the remaining part." 

In his annual message to Congress later in 
the same year he said: "The only relation of the 
tariff to big corporations as a whole is that 
the tariff makes manufactures profitable, and 
the tariff remedy proposed would be in effect 
simply to make manufactures unprofitable. . . . 
Our aim should be not by unwise tariff changes 
to give foreign products the advantage over 
domestic products, but by proper regulation to 
give domestic competition a fair chance. 

"Stability of economic policy must always 
261 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



be the prime economic need of this country. 
This stability should not be fossilization. The 
country has acquiesced in the wisdom of the 
protective-tariff principle. It is exceedingly 
undesirable that this system should be destroyed, 
or that there should be violent and radical 
changes therein. ... It is better to endure for 
a time slight inconveniences and inequalities in 
some schedules. ... It is, perhaps, too much 
to hope that partizanship may be entirely ex- 
cluded from consideration of the subject, but at 
least it can be made secondary to the business 
interests of the country— that is, to the interests 
of our people as a whole. Unquestionably 
these business interests will best be served if 
together with fixity of principle as regards the 
tariff we combine a system which will permit 
us from time to time to make the necessary re- 
application of the principle to the shifting na- 
tional needs. . . . There must never be any 
change which will jeopardize the standard of 
comfort, the standard of wages, of the Ameri- 
can wage-worker." 

From these passages may be drawn the gist 
of the entire matter. Mr. Roosevelt carefully 
steers clear of any worship of our protective 
tariff as heaven-born, like most Republican ora- 

262 



FUTURE OF PHILIPPINES 



tors, but treats it merely as an artificial device 
adopted for a purpose. Does it seem unreason- 
able to assume that when the disturbance of the 
elections of 1904 has subsided we shall see him 
heading a movement for tariff revision on the 
lines he has marked out above? Is he not 
committed to a non-political, conservative, and 
well-considered undertaking, in which no spe- 
cial interests shall be favored at the expense of 
the rest, and none persecuted because they wear 
an obnoxious title, but in which the whole sys- 
tem shall be treated as if the schedules were 
made for the people, not the people for the 
schedules? 

No one was ever authorized to expound to 
the public Mr. Roosevelt's views on the final 
disposition of the Philippine Islands, beyond the 
point to which he had carried such an exposi- 
tion himself. It would therefore be presump- 
tuous, in a volume like this, to do more than 
set forth the author's individual impressions, 
together with certain data from which each 
reader may draw his own inferences. I drew 
mine in a forecast of the President's general 
policies published a few days after his installa- 
tion at the White House, and I can not better 

263 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



introduce the little I have now to say on the 
subject than by citing a brief extract from that 
article: 

The Philippine problem can not be solved 
for Mr. Roosevelt by any one else, nor would 
it be safe to say that he expects by the end of 
his three or four years in office to bring this to 
a definite and final solution. A better state- 
ment of his views would doubtless be that in 
the course of four years the Filipinos can be 
carried a long distance forward on their way 
toward self-government. 

It is inconceivable that a man of Mr. Roose- 
velt's moral type would favor the retention of 
colonies merely for the sake of retaining them, 
if majorities both of the colonists and of the 
citizens of the parent country frankly desired 
a separation; it is equally out of the question 
for any one who knows the workings of his 
mind to suppose him in favor of turning such 
a people as the Filipinos loose upon the sister- 
hood of nations till they have been instructed 
in the ways of self-governing commonwealths. 
He would tell you that he is never an oppressor, 
always a civilizer; but he would hardly judge 
a people capable of passing upon the question 
of their permanent future form of government 
till they had tested what he regards as the ideal 
form. 



264 



OUR COLONIAL PROBLEM 

Reviewing this prophetic essay in the light 
of all that is known now, I do not care to change 
a single sentence. 

The Philippine problem, however easy of 
solution it may have seemed at first to the advo- 
cates of our immediate relinquishment of the 
islands, bids fair not to be solved for several 
years to come. It certainly will not during the 
present administration of President Roosevelt, 
or the next either — if he have another. There 
is little reason to suppose that it can be solved 
during his lifetime. This will account for the 
fact that we have not on record anywhere an 
utterance of his which deserves to be called a 
plan of settlement for this most complex of our 
national responsibilities. 

But of colonies peopled with an alien race, 
in a latitude where the pure Caucasian can not 
thrive, and on a side of the globe where they 
must be always separately defended by the 
mother country and can never help defend her 
in return, he expressed his opinion with great 
candor about two years before the battle of 
Manila harbor. "At best," said he, "the in- 
habitants of a colony are in a cramped and 
unnatural state. At the worst, the establish- 
ment of a colony prevents any healthy popular 

265 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



growth. ... At present the only hope for a 
colony that wishes to attain full moral and 
mental growth is to become an independent 
state or part of an independent state. . . . 
If the colony is in a region where the col- 
onizing race has to do its work by means 
of other inferior races the condition is much 
worse. From the standpoint of the race, little 
or nothing has been gained by the English con- 
quest and colonization in Jamaica. Jamaica 
has merely been turned into a negro island, with 
a future seemingly much like that of San Do- 
mingo. British Guiana, however well admin- 
istered, is nothing but a colony where a few 
hundred or few thousand white men hold the 
superior positions, while the bulk of the popu- 
lation is composed of Indians, negroes and 
Asiatics." 

Be it noted that he had chosen for his illus- 
tration the extreme case of the best mother of 
colonies the world ever saw, a country which 
has stood in the forefront of human civilization 
longer than any we now know. Obviously, if 
even she had never been able to rear distant 
colonies to the normal stature of her own 
people, no other nation — particularly one un- 
trained to the business, and with a form of gov- 

266 



FORBEARANCE AND RESOLUTION 



ernment which does not lend itself readily to 
such a change — seemed likely to succeed. Does 
not this view tally pretty well with his declara- 
tion in his Minneapolis speech of September 
2, 1 901 : "We are not trying to subjugate a peo- 
ple — we are trying to develop them and make 
them a law-abiding, industrious and educated 
people, and, we hope, ultimately a self-govern- 
ing people"? 

And we hear an echo of the same sentiment 
in his first message to Congress, three months 
later: "In dealing with the Philippine people 
we must show both patience and strength, for- 
bearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim 
is high. We do not desire to do for the island- 
ers merely what has elsewhere been done for 
tropic peoples by even the best foreign govern- 
ments. We hope to do for them what has never 
before been done for any people of the tropics 
— to make them fit for self-government after 
the fashion of the really free nations." 

Keeping these arguments in mind, let us 
pass to his next message, where we find him 
saying: "On July 4th last, the one hundred and 
twenty-sixth anniversary of the Declaration, 
peace and amnesty were promulgated in the 
Philippine Islands. . . . Civil government has 

267 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



now been introduced. Not only does each 
Filipino enjoy such rights to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness as he has never before 
known during the recorded history of the 
islands, but the people, taken as a whole, now 
enjoy a measure of self-government greater 
than that granted to any other Orientals by any 
foreign power, and greater than that enjoyed 
by any other Orientals under their own gov- 
ernments, save the Japanese alone. We have 
not gone too far in granting these rights of lib- 
erty and self-government; but we have cer- 
tainly gone to the limit that in the interest of 
the Philippine people themselves it was wise 
or just to go. To hurry matters, to go faster 
than we are now going, would entail calamity 
on the people of the islands." 

"But how," cry his critics, "can the Presi- 
dent's stated assurances that he is working 
toward the end of complete self-government 
by the people of the Philippines be reconciled 
with his informal approval, from time to time, 
of references to our permanent retention of the 
islands?" Personally, I have never heard or 
read a word of his that showed his expectation 
of permanent retention. His saying which is 
most widely quoted by the advocates of that 

268 



VICISSITUDES OF THE FLAG 

idea is the conclusion of a speech to the Sons 
of the American Revolution in May, 1902, 
when a loud burst of applause had greeted his 
tribute to the courage and endurance of the 
American soldiers in suppressing the insurrec- 
tion and restoring peace: "I thank you, fellow 
Americans. I think you make it evident that 
you intend that the flag shall 'stay put'!" 

Can this single phrase, called forth as de- 
scribed, be fairly cited as proof that he favors 
our occupation of the Philippines forever? It 
is a favorite sentimental declaration of a cer- 
tain class of patriots that the American flag, 
once hoisted over a piece of territory, can never 
be lowered without dishonor; but Mr. Roose- 
velt is aware, and has reminded such enthusi- 
asts, that the flag has been hoisted and lowered 
again and again with entire credit to itself and 
the country, and that it will probably undergo 
this experience again and again in the future. 
To have failed to lower it in Cuba would have 
put the stamp of eternal dishonor upon the 
United States, and no one was more vigorously 
insistent on this point than Mr. Roosevelt him- 
self when the annexationists were trying to un- 
dermine our upright policy in quitting the 
island after our work there was finished. 

269 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



What the President does try to impress upon 
his countrymen is that the flag, once planted 
anywhere in accordance with the laws of war 
or a peaceful compact, shall never be forcibly 
hauled down by an element hostile to the prin- 
ciples it represents. This rule he would apply 
equally against an external enemy or a domestic 
insurgent. According to the creed of the party 
of which he stands at the head, the authority 
of our Government is righteously established 
and now maintained in the Philippines. On 
this theory it makes no difference, for present 
purposes, whether we intend to continue it 
there till the end of time, or to relinquish it at 
the first honorable opportunity; the fact that it 
was there made it incumbent on the Federal 
authorities to put down everything which 
savored of rebellion by the natives subject to 
American sovereignty, just as they would 
promptly crush out any disorder on the part of 
the foreign residents, no matter to what power 
these owed allegiance and looked for protection. 

"One thing at a time" has always been Mr. 
Roosevelt's motto, and that one is the thing that 
lies next the hand. While the reign of blood- 
shed continued in the Philippines, the next 
thing was the suppression of the insurrection 

270 



THE "NEXT THING" 



by the sharpest and therefore the shortest 
campaigning of which the army was capable. 
When the insurrection proper subsided and the 
reign of brigandage set in, the next thing was 
the exertion of all the strength of the Philippine 
civil government, backed by the military forces 
where necessary, to restore order. Wherever 
the conditions of peace have been established 
and the operation of the laws is no longer ob- 
structed, the next thing is the education of the 
people in enlightened citizenship. This prob- 
ably will be the longest of the series of evolu- 
tionary processes. Where it will end, or when 
it will reach a stage at which a new question 
can be raised without confusion — the question 
of independence — God knows. 



19 271 



CHAPTER XVI 

A CREATURE OF IMPULSE 

Sudden whim or quick judgment? — How the coal arbitration was 
set afoot — The franchise tax — A Jew-baiting campaign flat- 
tened out — Vigorous indorsement on a pardon petition. 

MANY persons who come into only super- 
ficial contact with Mr. Roosevelt complain that 
he acts on impulse always, instead of consider- 
ing a proposition. Their opinion may have a 
modicum of truth in it. My own experience 
with him, however, has led me to believe that 
his acts are never responsive to a mere blind 
whim, but are thought out at lightning speed. 
Two facts must be kept in view in judging of 
his rapid action : first, he does not always carry 
his consideration of a question of conduct so 
far as his best friends wish he would, for, when 
he has decided what is the course to take, in 
most cases he leaves the consequences entirely 
out of account; second, he has formed the habit, 
from his early youth, of following decision with 
action without the needless loss of a moment. 
His motto is: "Do it now!" 

272 



NO WASTE OF TIME 



While he was in college a horse in a stable 
near his lodgings made a loud noise one night 
that showed the poor beast to be in trouble — 
probably cast in the stall and choking to death. 
The note of alarm awakened a half dozen kind- 
hearted neighbors, who hastened to the rescue 
as soon as they could draw on clothes enough 
for decency and descend from their sleeping- 
rooms. They were in time only to lend a hand 
at the finish. Young Roosevelt had got to the 
spot already and relieved the first necessities 
of the horse. The promptness of his response 
was due to the fact that he had come as he was 
— clad in nothing but a night-shirt — and had 
dropped out of a second-story window to save 
the time of going down-stairs and through the 
house to the back door. 

In the summer of 1902, I went to him with 
the suggestion that, even if he did not feel justi- 
fied yet in interfering in the coal strike and try- 
ing to ward off a national calamity, he could at 
least acquaint himself with the facts of the situa- 
tion so as to be ready to act promptly when the 
time came. 

"Who is the man to get me the facts?" he 
demanded, without a moment's hesitancy. 

"Carroll D. Wright," I answered, having 

273 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



already prepared myself for the question, and 
citing my authority from the Revised Statutes. 

"Find out for me whether he is in the city." 

With what I fondly fancied was speed, I 
made my way to Commissioner Wright's office. 
His secretary told me he was at Marblehead 
Neck, Mass. "We answered a telephone in- 
quiry of the same sort a few minutes ago," he 
added. "The President wanted his address, 
and in haste." 

I ran back to the White House only to find 
that a telegram had already gone to Mr. Wright, 
calling him to Washington for a conference. 
Thus quick was Mr. Roosevelt to act upon an 
idea which appealed to him on its first state- 
ment. Mr. Wright's report set in motion the 
train of events leading up to the arbitration of 
the strike. 

Mr. Roosevelt always seems to be in a hurry, 
as soon as his mind is made up, to let the world 
know what he is going to do. But for this very 
reason I have never agreed with the commenta- 
tors who describe him as a man of dramatic sur- 
prises. A dramatic surprise, as I understand the 
term, is one in which the curtain is suddenly 
lifted on a completed fact. The theatrical ele- 
ment is dissipated by long heralding, and Mr. 

274 



PREMATURE ANNOUNCEMENTS 

Roosevelt often sounds his warning a good 
while before he acts. His decision in Collector 
Bidwell's case became public in October, though 
the change was not to be made till the following 
spring. The announcement that Pension-Com- 
missioner Evans was to be transferred to some 
other office was given out about April i, 1902, 
though the new place for him was not found till 
May, and Mr. Ware was not named as his suc- 
cessor till still later. It was as early as July of 
the same year that news came from Oyster Bay 
that Augustus T. Wimberley was to retire from 
the Collectorship of Customs at New Orleans, 
although his current commission would not ex- 
pire till December. 

These are a few notable instances chosen 
from a multitude. My own explanation of 
such premature announcements is that they serve 
a twofold purpose: they stop empty guessing 
and gossip, and they head off a great many 
importunities from professional office-seekers. 
Once in a while, too, they operate like marriage 
bans, encouraging all who have anything to say 
against the proposed change to say it and have 
done. The advance advertisement of his inten- 
tions has thus, to my certain knowledge, saved 
the President once from giving an important 

275 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



office to a chronic drunkard, and once from ap- 
pointing a negro-lyncher in the South. 

Now and then we hear stories of Mr. Roose- 
velt's sudden and impulsive change of purpose, 
which on analysis lead back merely to one of his 
tricks of speech. In conversation, if he is at all 
interested, his mind keeps leaping ahead, and 
forecasting the conclusions aimed at by his com- 
panion before the latter has fairly finished the 
major premise. This habit, by the way, often 
gets him into trouble when he is talking with 
men who are not familiar with his ways. His 
statement of another's conclusion, even with an 
indication of interest in it, does not mean that 
he accepts it himself. When he accompanies it 
with an ejaculation like, "Just so," or "I see," 
the comparative stranger is apt to confuse mere 
quick apprehension with cordial approval. 

This will account for the occasional appear- 
ance in the press of some announcement that the 
President purposes doing so-and-so, followed 
promptly by a refutation, although the original 
news was evidently published in good faith and 
on reputable authority. No one is more aston- 
ished than Mr. Roosevelt when one of these false 
reports gets into circulation. He has no con- 
ception of his share in its authorship. 

276 



TRICKS OF SPEECH 



Another of his tricks of speech akin to this, 
but a trick merely, is that of echoing with assent 
a remark made by a companion, but inserting 
into his own version a qualifying word or phrase 
which, as his speech is very rapid, only an 
equally rapid sense is likely to catch. For ex- 
ample, "The plan I have suggested is the only 
one open to us in this exigency," remarks a visit- 
ing Congressman. "I quite agree with you," 
answers the President: "the plan you have sug- 
gested is almost the only one open to us in 
this exigency." Then the Congressman hastens 
away to spread the news that he has induced the 
President to adopt his plan. He is astounded 
when the President denies it. The President 
is equally astounded that the Congressman 
should have made such a statement. He had 
spoken in all sincerity when he indorsed the 
spirit of the Congressman's remark first and 
modified its phraseology so slightly afterward. 

"Smith is the best man in the whole batch 
for District-Attorney," remarks a Senator, after 
going through a pile of application papers at 
the White House. "You are quite right," as- 
sents the President: "in most respects, Smith 
is the best man in the batch." But later that 
day the President concludes that "most respects" 

277 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



do not include the one respect which he is spe- 
cially trying to meet in that selection; so he 
decides upon Jones, who does fill the bill in that 
particular, though he may not in others. The 
Senator, who has meanwhile informed Smith's 
friends that their man is sure of appointment, 
goes about like a roaring lion when he hears 
of Jones's good fortune, alleging that the Presi- 
dent has changed his mind without warning. 
As a matter of fact, the Senator was simply 
misled by his own ear, and the wish that was 
father to the thought. 

Some of his critics who lay to his impulsive- 
ness everything in him which excites no respon- 
sive thrill in themselves, charged to that trait 
Mr. Roosevelt's tactics as Governor, in press- 
ing the corporation franchise tax bill. The 
trouble with this criticism is that it is based on 
a short memory. For years before he became 
Governor Mr. Roosevelt had insisted that one 
of the weak points in our American practise of 
government was the State's willingness to give 
away valuable assets which in any private busi- 
ness transaction would command a great price. 
This fact seems to have been generally forgot- 
ten, or else the professional politicians assumed 
that, like themselves, Mr. Roosevelt had one set 

278 



FRANCHISE TAX 



of ideas for the consumption of his friends and 
for discreet campaign use, and another set to 
govern his actual practise when the opportunity 
arrived. At any rate, as soon as it was discov- 
ered that he really intended to embody his views 
in a message to the Legislature, and urge the 
enactment of a law taxing the monopolistic 
franchises of corporations, the Republican State 
machine remonstrated. 

No such promise had been made in the party 
platform, argued the leaders. "More's the 
pity," responded the Governor; "it was a sad 
oversight, but I'll try to make it good." The 
corporations have always come down liberally 
when the campaign hat has been passed, argued 
the leaders. "If you mean that they thought 
they were buying the Republican party," re- 
sponded the Governor, "it is high time that we 
should undeceive them." The corporations 
deserve just as much consideration as any one 
else at the hands of the State, argued the lead- 
ers. "And, conversely, are under just as great 
obligations to the State," responded the Gov- 
ernor; "that's why I'm trying to even things up." 
There is great danger that when untrained leg- 
islators or assessors undertake a specialty like 
the valuation of franchises, they will blunder, 

279 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



argued the leaders. "Then we'll call in the 
experts to help us frame our bill or trim it into 
shape," responded the Governor; "we'll have 
hearings for the corporations, and they will be 
represented by the best talent their means can 
command." 

It was easy enough to have a bill introduced 
at the beginning of the session — the framework 
of a measure which could be improved and fin- 
ished at leisure; but when this presently stuck 
fast in a committee pigeonhole, how was it to 
be got out? It was easy enough to invite the 
corporations to come forward and be heard, but 
who could compel them to accept? 

The newspapers made a sensational spread 
on the news. Some warned the corporations 
that now was their time to move upon the Gov- 
ernor before he had his fighting blood aroused. 
Others, perhaps a majority, treated the matter 
as if it were one of Mr. Roosevelt's so-called 
theatrical outbursts which would soon pass and 
be forgotten. The corporations shrugged their 
shoulders and said nothing. 

After the Governor had talked to a good 
many of the legislators, he reached the conclu- 
sion that some influence was at work against 
him under the surface. Whether it was a cor- 

280 



A "LOST" MESSAGE 



poration lobby, or the party machine, or both, 
was hard to make out. He did not waste a great 
deal of time trying to analyze the obstruction 
himself, but made up his mind to apply the 
solvent of an aroused popular sentiment. The 
end of the session was at hand, and under the 
State Constitution the only way he could get that 
bill before the Legislature was by a special mes- 
sage declaring the business urgent. He wrote 
the message. It was pretty temperate in tone, 
but contained, as his messages usually do, a 
very plain statement of facts. It was inter- 
cepted and "lost" on its way to the Legis- 
lature. 

The Governor was not satisfied with the 
explanation of its disappearance, so he prepared 
a duplicate and sent it in at once. This time 
he took precautions to see that it got safely into 
the hands of the Speaker of the Assembly, with 
a warning that if it were not read from the 
Speaker's desk, another copy would be read by 
a member on the floor. It was read from the 
desk. The laggard committeemen, rather than 
brave the chance of being skinned alive in 
the next campaign, voted the bill out. The 
members of both houses, actuated by the same 
patriotic motive, decided to let it come up for 

281 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



passage; enough of them voted "aye" to pass 
it, and the Legislature adjourned. 

Then the corporations ceased to shrug their 
shoulders and began to stir around. They sent 
in their belated acceptances of the Governor's 
invitation, and asked to be heard. "Certainly," 
was his cheerful answer, "I'll hear you with 
pleasure. Why didn't you speak before?" 

Of course, they didn't like the bill as it 
stood. "Well," said the Governor, "I don't 
know that I am entirely satisfied with it myself, 
but it was the best we could do under the cir- 
cumstances." 

"Then you won't sign it? You will post- 
pone the whole business till next session and try 
again?" pleaded the corporations. 

"One proposition at a time, gentlemen," said 
the Governor. "I'm willing to recommend any 
proper amendments at the next session, but 
meanwhile — well, you know the old proverb 
about the bird in the hand? I've tried all win- 
ter to get a bill; now that I've got one I don't 
think I'd better let it slip away from me. I'll 
sign this bill, and then I'll sign any amendments 
passed next winter that commend themselves to 
my judgment." 

"But next winter is some distance away," the 
282 



CORPORATE DEFIANCE 



corporations persisted. "In the meantime the 
law will have gone into operation and irrepara- 
ble damage been done. Let this bill drop, and 
call an extra session to pass one that will be fair 
all around. We'll help you." 

"If you really mean that," said the Gov- 
ernor, "I will split the difference with you. I 
will sign this bill: that secures us something, in 
any event. Then I'll convene an extra session, 
and we can work together for such modifications 
as would be just and right." 

Seeing that he was not to be cajoled, the 
pleaders withdrew. He was as good as his 
word. The extra session met, some changes 
were made in the act, but not so radical as the 
corporations wished. "We'll fight your law in 
the courts," they thundered. "By all means," 
he answered imperturbably; "then we'll find out 
which side is right, and the next legislation we 
put through will avoid any mistakes the courts 
discover in this." 

The entire incident may have been, as the 
critics charge, the fruit of an impulsive tem- 
perament insufficiently controlled; but most 
common folk will fancy that they can detect 
traces of deliberation and method in it. So 
they will in the Ahlwardt episode. 

283 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Dr. Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semitic agi- 
tator, visited the United States in 1895. Mr. 
Roosevelt was then Police Commissioner in 
New York. When it was advertised that Ahl- 
wardt was coming to that city to make a pub- 
lic address on his favorite subject, a number of 
the anti-Semites who had joined in this invita- 
tion were startled by a sudden thought, and 
hastened to Police Headquarters to assure them- 
selves that their guest would be protected from 
violence. They carried their application to 
the President of the Board. 

"What are you afraid of?" asked Mr. Roose- 
velt. 

"Dr. Ahlwardt is often very bitter in his 
expressions," they answered. "The Jews may 
assemble at the hall and mob him." 

"That's nonsense," said the Commissioner; 
"there are no more peaceable citizens in New 
York than the Jews." 

"But we should feel better satisfied if you 
would give the Doctor a special guard of police 
on the evening of the lecture," urged the deputa- 
tion. "Their appearance in the hall would awe 
the intending rioters." 

"Go home and ease your minds," said Mr. 
Roosevelt. "Dr. Ahlwardt shall have a special 

284 



A HEBREW BODY-GUARD 

guard of police, and it will be the most im- 
pressive-looking body of men on the force." 

His visitors withdrew, with many expres- 
sions of gratitude which he received with a sig- 
nificant smile. He had already formed his 
plan, and sent for an inspector who was noted 
for his familiarity with the personnel of the 
rank and file. 

"I wish a list made of thirty good, trusty, in- 
telligent men, all Jews," said the Commissioner. 
"Don't bother yourself to hunt up their religious 
antecedents; take those who have the most pro- 
nounced Hebrew physiognomy — the stronger 
their ancestral marking the better. When you 
have selected the detail, order them to report to 
me in a body." 

On the arrival of the Jewish officers, Mr. 
Roosevelt lined them up before him for scru- 
tiny. The inspector had done his work thor- 
oughly. A more Hebraic group of Hebrews 
probably never were gathered in one small 
room. St. Paul's Epistle could not have got 
past that open door if it had been shot out of 
a catapult. 

"Now," said the Commissioner, as he sur- 
veyed the line with satisfaction gleaming 
through his big gold spectacles, "I am going to 

285 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



assign you men to the most honorable service 
you have ever done — the protection of an enemy, 
and the defense of religious liberty and free 
speech in the chief city of the United States. 
You all know who and what Dr. Ahlwardt is. 
I am going to put you in charge of the hall 
where he lectures, and hold you responsible for 
perfect good order there throughout the even- 
ing. I have no more sympathy with Jew-bait- 
ing than you have. But this is'a country where 
your people are free to think and speak and act 
as they choose in religious matters, as long as 
you do not interfere with the peace and comfort 
of your neighbors, and Dr. Ahlwardt is entitled 
to the same privilege. It should be your pride 
to see that he is protected in it; that will be the 
finest way of showing your appreciation of the 
liberty you yourselves enjoy under the Ameri- 
can flag." 

Imagine the feelings of Dr. Ahlwardt's sup- 
porters when they went to the hall on the even- 
ing of his address prepared for a disturbance, 
but found planted like pillars at the doors, and 
caryatids inside, an array of police with features, 
coloring and accent that showed them to belong 
to the very race against whom the speaker was 
to declaim. There were Jews in the audience, 

286 



CHECKMATING AN AGITATOR 

too; but, whatever their impulse, their col- 
leagues in uniform set them an example of per- 
fect outward equanimity and self-control which 
could not pass unappreciated. Only one specta- 
tor ventured to interrupt the proceedings; be- 
fore he had had a chance to state which side he 
was on, he was suppressed by a stalwart officer 
with a rarely characteristic profile, and hustled 
ignominiously into the street. 

The rest of the show was as placid as a mill- 
pond. The most disappointed man in New 
York that night undoubtedly was the orator 
himself, who was so used to rousing his hearers 
to frenzy that he missed the inspiration of his 
customary turmoil. The quiet which reigned 
everywhere operated as a cold douche not 
only on that meeting, but on the entire anti- 
Semitic program mapped out for Ahlwardt's 
visit. 

Before leaving this subject, I ought to say 
that I do recall one case of "hot impulse" which 
perhaps deserves the designation. A low crea- 
ture in the form of a man had been convicted 
in a Western State of unlawful use of the mails. 
Although well educated, worthily married, with 
a family growing up about him, he had led 
astray a young girl — scarcely more than a child 

20 287 



THE MAN KOOM.Vj l.l 



in maturity -and then had written to her ex- 
plicit instructions how to hide her shame by 
following folly with crime. The court had 
imposed a sentence of two years' imprisonment 
upon him. He had appealed, but without ef- 
fect, as the conviction was securely based. 

Before he had been in the penitentiary a 
month his friends got up a petition for his par- 
don, and succeeded in inducing ten of the twelve- 
jurors to sign it. The memorial set forth that 
"up to the time of his conviction," which of 
course included the period while he was com- 
mitting his offenses, he had been "a man of 
good moral character and standing in the com- 
munity"; that a family was dependent upon him 
for support; that he had already been punished 
enough, and that his behavior in prison had 
been exemplary. On the other hand, the judge 
who tried the case, though consenting to let the 
petition go to the President, declared that the 
evidence showed that the fellow had been a "cal- 
culating debaucher of female virtue ;\ni\ a wil- 
ful and corrupt perjurer"; while the District 
Attorney added that the trial had proved the 

defendant to have taken advantage of his victim 
"in a most shocking manner/ 1 and that there was 
"not a single redeeming feature in his case and 

288 



CHARACTERISTIC INDORSEMENT 

absolutely nothing that would tend to excuse 
him or excite sympathy." 

Yet this brute was able to command the 
assistance of a multitude of the best citizens in 
the community where he had formerly lived, 
and the services of the entire Congressional 
delegation from his State to work for his par- 
don. This final card was expected to prove the 
winning one, and it was played for its full effect; 
for the State would be needed by Mr. Roose- 
velt in the campaign of 1904, and its Senators 
and Representatives would have a share in the 
convention that was expected to nominate him 
to succeed himself. 

The President scowled harder and harder 
as he read the pardon papers through. When 
he had finished the last one, he set his teeth, 
jabbed his pen into the ink with such force as 
almost to bend its nibs, and scribbled an in- 
dorsement on the petition, of which the conclu- 
sion ran thus: 

"I sincerely regret it is not in my power 
materially to increase the sentence of this scoun- 
drel. Theodore Roosevelt." 



289 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE MAN OF MANY PARTS 

A marvel of versatility — Spoiling an embryo naturalist — Perils of 
an emphatic style — Masterful manners — Mr. Roosevelt's 
work as an author — Method of composition — His newspaper 
reading. 

ELSEWHERE I have referred to Mr. Roose- 
velt's many-sided quality. Even at long range 

this characteristic is observable, as shown by 
the skit in an English periodical which greeted 
his accession to the Presidency: 

A smack of Lord Cromer, JcffDavis a touch of him ; 
A little of Lincoln, but not vcrv much of him ; 
Kitchener, Bismarck, and Germany's Will, 

Jupiter, Chamberlain, Buffalo Bill. 

In all his varied characters he lias been, ami 
is, a marvel of energy. "A steam-engine in 
trousers" was what Senator Foraker dubbed 
him. "A volcano of electricity" was the phrase 
devised by the Populist Judge Doster, of Kansas. 
"Theodore the Sudden" was another title that 

294 1 



SPOILING A SCIENTIST 



stuck for a time. One of his biographers de- 
scribes him in an introductory paragraph as 
"that amiable and gifted author, legislator, field- 
sportsman, soldier, reformer and executive." 

This is a pretty good postscript for one 
man's name, but it is not a complete catalogue, 
for in the making of a popular leader was un- 
doubtedly spoiled a very good natural scientist. 
The most conspicuous ornaments of his room in 
college were skins and stuffed animals. His 
birds he mounted himself. Live insects and 
reptiles were always in evidence in his study; 
his chums tell a funny story of a scene when he 
accidentally let loose on the floor of a Boston 
street-car a bundle of lobsters he was carrying 
to his rooms in Cambridge for dissection; and 
some of the other occupants of his lodging-house 
were thrown into a panic one day on confront- 
ing in an upper corridor an enormous tortoise 
which a friend had sent him from the South 
Seas, and which had escaped from his boot- 
closet and started for the bath-room in search 
of water. His graduating paper was an essay 
on natural history. 

The late "Tom" Reed of Maine, although 
full of appreciation of Roosevelt's sturdy vir- 
tues, could not repress a bit of irony now and 

291 



THE MAN KOOSEVELT 



then at the expense of his peculiarities. "It 
there is one thing more than another for which 
I admire you, Theodore," he said once, "it is 
your original discovery of the Ten Command- 
ments." This shot, of course, was aimed at Mr. 
Roosevelt's impressive way of stating well-set- 
tled and familiar truths in argument. But that 
trick of speech is not more characteristic than 
another, which I have never seen mentioned in 
any of the printed sketches of him. His love 
of fair dealing forbids his leaving a proposi- 
tion half-stated, waiting for comment or ques- 
tions from some interested party to draw out 
the rest, but moves him always to adjust the 
equilibrium at the outset. 

For example, he never writes a line to de- 
fend his negro policy because it is simple jus- 
tice to the negro, without adding that it will 
prove the best possible thing for the white man 
also in the long run. The civilized public thor- 
oughly enjoyed his recent letter on the atroci- 
ties of lynch law, apropos of the frequency with 

which negroes were burned at the stake for the 
most hideous of crimes; but they had to read 
with it some equally wholesome comments on 
the crime itself and the punishment it deserved. 
Mis speeches on the right of labor to organize 

292 



BALANCING OPINIONS 



for its own protection have always been coupled 
with a reminder that this right does not justify 
the commission of violence of any sort; and 
when his Trust policy had exposed him to at- 
tack as an enemy of capital, his answer was: 
"We shall find it necessary to shackle cunning 
as in the past we have shackled force." In tell- 
ing an audience of something which he had 
done for a Catholic because the Catholic was a 
victim of religious proscription in the com- 
munity where he lived, he took pains to add 
that he would have done just the same thing 
for a Protestant if the local situation had been 
reversed. 

This is an admirable practise in most cases, 
because it insures a well-balanced instead of 
one-sided presentation of any subject. But now 
and then the equilibrizing process seems to have 
been dragged in, as it were, from pure force of 
habit, and then it mars the best effect of what 
Mr. Roosevelt has to say; as where, in express- 
ing the sorrow of the American people for the 
death of Queen Victoria, he adopted the cau- 
tious prelude: "In view of the sympathy shown 
by the late Queen Victoria with our loss in the 
death of President McKinley," etc. And his 
description of the explosion of a Spanish shell 

293 



THK MAN ROOSEVELT 



among a group of his Rough Riders, resulting 
in the death of "a singularly gallant young Har- 
vard fellow, Stanley Hollister," is rendered al- 
most bathetic by the next sentence: "An equally 
gallant young fellow from Yale, Theodore Mil- 
ler, had already been mortally wounded." 

Most men who have been in his position are- 
famous for some single sentence, terse in itself 
and forcefully applicable to the exigency in 
which it was used. Mr. Roosevelt's name is 
associated with several such. Still, one who is 
familiar with his habit of speech might wonder 
whether he would not have lengthened Grant's 
u Let no guilty man escape" by an appendix, 
"but guard equally the innocent"; and changed 
Cleveland's "Tell the truth" into "Tell both 
sides." 

The gift of ready expression with which Mr. 
Roosevelt is endowed by nature has hurt rather 
than helped what might have been an uncom- 
monly good style. In both speaking and wri- 
ting he knows what he wishes to say, and savs it 
without hesitancy <>r reserve. But he has a 
positive genius for epigram and satire, and the 
possessor of such a faculty is apt to he led into 
extremes in speech. Mr. Roosevelt fairly lives 
in an atmosphere <>t superlatives, lie will 

294 



SUPERLATIVE EXPRESSION 

speak of a "perfectly good man with a perfectly 
honest motive," where all that he intends to say 
is that the man is well-meaning. He is "de- 
lighted" where most of us are pleased. The 
latest visitor is "just the very man I wanted to 
see," and "nothing I have heard in a long time 
has interested me so much" as the passing bit 
of information. 

Because of this habit of extreme expression 
I am sometimes asked whether I consider the 
President a fair judge of men. I should assent 
with the reservation: when he takes time to 
weigh his first suggestions. His danger lies in 
two facts: first, his own natural candor, which 
leads him to accept a man of aggressive mien 
at face value but makes him suspicious of hesi- 
tancy of manner; second, the enormous variety 
of human types he has met in the course of his 
wanderings, and the amount of good he has 
found under many unpromising exteriors, so 
that the keenness of his original impressions has 
been somewhat dulled. He has a sanguine tem- 
perament, and would rather find a stranger a 
"good fellow" than not, and the right sort of an 
introduction often prepares the way for a kindly 
judgment. 

On the other hand, I recall one case where 

295 



THE MAN ROOSKYELT 



he refused to be reconciled to the presence of 
a certain holdover in office, and the only reason 
he vouchsafed for his dislike was: "I had him 
in here the other day to ask him some questions, 
and he tried to doddle with me." Knowing 
the obnoxious officer as 1 did, I understood the 
phrase perfectly; and when I ran the matter 
down I found that his offending consisted in 
his hesitation to answer certain questions which 
he thought, in the interest of good discipline, 
ought to be asked of the head of his depart- 
ment rather than of himself. 

While not a martinet in ordinary matters, 
Mr. Roosevelt can exercise the iron rule of a 
despot on occasion. He will accept no excuse 
from officers of high rank and education in 
either arm of the war service, when they per- 
sist in squabbling to the scandal of their asso- 
ciates and the demoralization of the rank and 
file. The Miles-Corbin feud was still linger- 
ing when he became President. He brought 
hi- list down with the order, "Stop it!" ami it 
stopped. General Miles passed some unneces- 
sary comments on the Sampson-Schley contro- 
versy, <>l which the public- had already had a 
nauseating dose; he was rebuked at once, and 
in a manner which showed that the President 

200 



CUTTING QUARRELS SHORT 

meant to adopt more serious measures if the 
General did not heed his first admonition. Two 
rear-admirals of the navy who, at the close of 
the court of inquiry in the same case, took ex- 
ception to the mildness of the findings, received 
something as near a reprimand as the law would 
permit the President to administer except as the 
result of a trial. Edgar Stanton Maclay, an 
employee in the Brooklyn navy-yard who had 
written a history denouncing Schley as a caitiff 
and a coward, and something little short of a 
traitor, was dismissed summarily from his posi- 
tion. But when Schley's partizans in Congress 
let it come to the President's ears that they 
thought of introducing a resolution flattering 
their hero and reflecting on his enemies, the 
President let it come to their ears in return that 
he should veto the resolution in a message which 
might result in mortification for somebody. 

No stated communications passed between 
the White House and the Capitol; there were 
no face-to-face consultations; everything was 
conducted in the same informal manner on the 
President's part as on that of the Congressmen, 
so that no one could complain afterward of 
threats or other unbecoming compulsions. But 
he gave them distinctly to understand that for 

297 



THE MAN llOOSKYKLT 



decency's sake he had himself abstained from 
doing anything to keep alive this unfortunate 
quarrel; that he had treated both sides with 
equal justice throughout; and that he was re- 
solved to throttle any attempt to drag him fur- 
ther into the matter, or to prolong public dis- 
cussion of it to the damage of an honorable 
service. That ended the folly. To muster a 
two-thirds vote aganist a veto by a highly popu- 
lar President, issued in behalf <>1 peace, was 
more of a task than the authors of the proposed 
resolution cared to tackle. With their retire- 
ment from the held the Sampson-Schley con- 
troversy, which had been carried on continu- 
ously for three and one-half years, passed out 
of sight in a single night — and forever, as all 
good citizens will devoutly hope. 

All his life he has been taking up lines of 
work which other men have followed, but hunt- 
ing for something to do there which they have 
overlooked. As Assistant Secretary he found 
everything in the naval establishment at loose- 
ends so that the head of the department could 
not have acted quickly and on accurate informa- 
tion in case of war. For example, the latest re- 
vrised list purporting to show the names, capacity, 
ami size of crews of the merchant vessels which 

298 



PREPARING THE NAVY 



could be drafted into the auxiliary navy if 
needed, contained the names of three ships 
which had been destroyed or lost since the re- 
port was made up, although one of these disas- 
ters had filled whole pages of newspaper space 
about the time of its occurrence. The fact that 
such antiquated data had been allowed to re- 
main among the live records of the depart- 
ment showed that it had been made nobody's 
special business to keep the list abreast of the 
times. 

This and similar discoveries led Mr. Roose- 
velt to order a general cleaning-up and the 
preparation of a complete property list. His 
plan aroused much criticism, nevertheless, both 
in and out of the service. Inside, it devolved 
extra hard duty for a while upon the clerical 
force in Washington and at the naval stations; 
outside, it smacked of jingoism because it could 
not be done in secret, and from the news that 
the United States navy was getting into con- 
dition for war the natural inference was that 
war was expected. Yet throughout the period 
of greatest activity, and though absolutely con- 
vinced in his own mind that war was coming 
and coming soon, Mr. Roosevelt lost no op- 
portunity to discourage "war talk" among his 

299 



THE MAX ROOSEVELT 



subordinates. He would submit to no news- 
paper interviews on the subject himself, and in 
every way did what he could to allay popular 
excitement. Only with his associates in the 
Government, or in company where he felt that 
his confidence would be respected, would he 
discuss his private views. 

A characteristic story is told of his insistence 
on constant target practise in the navy. Early 
in his administration he asked for and received 
an extraordinarily large appropriation for am- 
munition. A few months later he called for 
another. This startled Congress. Questioned 
as to what had become of his first fund, he an- 
swered: "Every cent of it has been spent for 
powder and shot, and every bit of powder and 
shot has been fired." And when asked what he 
intended doing with the additional amount: "1 
shall use every dollar of that, too, within the 
next thirty days in practise shooting. That's 
what ammunition is made for — to burn. ,, 

His impatience of red tape was a standing 
topic of comment at the department. The 
bureaucrats who surrounded him there were 
never able to understand why they should not 
be permitted to go on as they had, doing things 
by rote, no matter how much time might be 

300 



LITERARY ACTIVITIES 



consumed thereby to no purpose. One com- 
mittee which had met with him daily for a 
week, and adjourned every afternoon without 
making any discernible progress, left him 
pacing the floor. "To-morrow," said one of 
the party as they went out, "we can do so- 
and-so." 

"To-morrow!" echoed Mr. Roosevelt, halt- 
ing and gritting his teeth. "Gentlemen, if 
Noah had had to consult such a committee as 
this about building his ark, it wouldn't have 
been built yet!" 

No book about Theodore Roosevelt would 
be complete, of course, without at least a refer- 
ence to his work as an author. As I have 
attempted in this volume no more serious task 
than the grouping of a few personal recollec- 
tions and impressions, I must leave anything 
like criticism of his literary enterprises, or even 
a comprehensive bibliography, to other hands. 
Suffice it here to say that his chief activities in 
this field are represented by his "Naval War 
of 1 812," which deserves mention by itself be- 
cause it has always been regarded as the stand- 
ard text-book on its subject, though published 
within two years of his graduation from Har- 
vard; "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman"; biog- 

301 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



rapines <>t Thomas Hart Benton, Gouverneur 
Morris and Oliver Cromwell; "Ranch Life and 
the Hunting Trail"; "The Winning of the 
West/' which ranks next to his story of 1812 
as a monumental history; "The Wilderness 
Hunter"; "New York"; "The Rough Riders' 1 ; 
and collections of essays entitled "American 
Ideals" and "The Strenuous Life." 

Besides these, he has produced several minor 
works, and collaborated as author, compiler and 
editor of composite volumes on historical and 
sporting topics. Although he realizes the value 
and popularity of many of his publications, he 
tells with glee of a visit he once paid to a book- 
store in Idaho where he had noticed a copy of 
his "Winning of the West" in the window. 
Falling into conversation with the proprietor, 
he motioned with his thumb toward the history, 
inquiring with feigned curiosity: "Who is this 
man Roosevelt?" 

"Oh," was the answer, "he's a ranch-driver 
up in the cattle COUntrj ." 

"What's your opinion of his work?" 

The dealer hesitated a moment ami then 
remarked, meditatively: "Well, I've always 
thought I'd like to meet the author ami tell him 
that it he'd stuck to running ranches and not 



A SPECIMEN PAGE 










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C^^^f^ c~* 



*5^ C£+ g*y~~f <rjS ~£Zju^ 




CLOSING PARAGRAPH OF THE PRESIDENT'S ESSAY ON "THE 
STRENUOUS LIFE," IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING. 






21 



303 



I HE MAN ROOSEVELT 



tried to u rite books, he'd have cut a heap bigger 
figure at his trade.'' 

Mr. Roosevelt's methods in writing are his 
own. They are bound to be, it he would write 
at all; for a man who between necessity and 
choice spends so much of his time in the com- 
pany of others, would stand a poor chance as 
a maker of books if he were obliged to seclude 
himself for several hours a day behind barred 
doors in his study. Fortunately for him and 
for the reading public, he has a faculty lacking 
in authors generally — the ability to halt a piece 
of literary work anywhere, go about other busi- 
ness, and then return to his composition and 
take up its threads where lie had let them fall, 
never sacrificing his continuity of thought or 
rhetorical construction. 

Most of his original composing is done on 
his feet, pacing up and down the room and dic- 
tating to a stenographer. He does not even see 
how his periods hang together till they have 
been reduced to typewritten form and the sheets 
laid upon his desk. Then, when an interval of 
reduced tension comes, his eye falls upon the 
manuscript and lingers there. li be is con- 
versing, the closing words of the next sentence 
are uttered in a dreamy tone and die away 

3"+ 



METHODS OF COMPOSITION 

almost with a drawl, as his glance sweeps across 
the uppermost page on the pile and he sidles 
absent-mindedly into his seat and bends over 
the table. His left hand lifts the top sheet while 
the right gropes for a pen, and in a moment the 
author is quite buried in his work, annotating 
between the lines as he reads. 

The friend who is with him probably re- 
spects his mood and subsides into a sofa-corner, 
or warms his hands before the fire, or amuses 
himself at the window till the first force of ab- 
sorption has spent itself and Mr. Roosevelt lifts 
his head to remark, "Now, here is where I be- 
lieve I have made a point never before brought 
out," and proceeds to read aloud a passage and 
descant upon it. If this impromptu enlarge- 
ment transcends certain bounds, the speaker is 
on his feet again in an instant and pacing the 
floor as he talks. Sentence follows sentence 
from his lips like shots from the muzzle of a 
magazine-gun — all well-timed and well-aimed 
in spite of their swiftness of utterance. The 
chances are that one of them will recoil to im- 
press its author afresh with its aptness, and back 
he will sidle into the vacant chair to put that 
idea into visible form with his pen and wedge 
it in between two others. 

305 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Next to describing a hunting adventure or 
painting an historical picture tor that is his 
Style as a chronicler rather than parading a 
sequence of names and dates and events — his 
greate>t fondness is lor reviewing books, and his 
services are in constant demand. 1 have rarely 
seen him engaged in this line of composition 
with the subject of his review bodily before him, 
though it is usually in the hands of his copyist 
with certain paragraphs ma iked lor insertion 
in his manuscript. But he knows the book 
from a single reading, accomplished in less time 
than it would take most of us to struggle through 
twenty pages. 

As a reader, his mind operates almost like 
the automatic counter in a mint: to what it 
wants, or expects to find, it seems to he guided 
by unerring instinct; the rest it rejects quite as 
swiftly and surely. To watch him read a hook, 
it appears as if he were merely running his eye 
down so many margins in a dictionary, to catch 
a title here and there of which he is especially in 
search. This method is probably the fruit of 
many years' experience in a variety <>i fields. 
As the old mariner knows how to scan a log 
without waste of time, and the trained scientist 
understands what to ignore as familiar ami what 

306 



READING HABITS 



to exploit as a fresh discovery, so the intelli- 
gence of this many-sided man responds mag- 
netically to the presence of a new idea or a par- 
ticularly vigorous presentation of an old one. 

He reads a newspaper article, by the way, 
in much the same manner, though naturally with 
still greater swiftness. Flash — boom — and his 
shot has struck the very central thought in a 
column of one thousand words. In thirty years' 
observation of exchange-readers in newspaper 
offices, I have never seen anything to approach 
his celerity. Moreover, the answer to the argu- 
ment, or the refutation of the charge, is out 
almost in the same breath that voices the closing 
sentence from the type. 

And speaking of newspapers, no misappre- 
hension is more wide-spread than that Mr. 
Roosevelt is given to newspaper reading. On 
the contrary, his indulgence in this practise is 
sparing beyond that of almost any public man 
I have ever known. If he is doing something 
which is likely to create excitement in a certain 
neighborhood, he may direct one of his clerks 
to watch the comments of the local press and 
bring him any that are particularly trenchant. 
He has occasionally subscribed to a clippings 
bureau. But this is about as far as he goes. 

307 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



He does not object to criticism, as such. 
Even ridicule is welcome, if it be founded on 
fact and witty in form. The pictorial carica- 
ture is his delight, which is not dampened by 
the fact that it may make him appear as a mere 
effigy composed of slouch-hat, top-boots, knot- 
ted neckerchief, glistening spectacles and tomb- 
stone teeth. The one thing he can not endure 
in print is a falsehood about himself. An ed- 
itorial attack which assumes such a falsehood 
as true without inquiry, or which turns upon 
an obviously deliberate misconstruction of his 
words or acts, comes next in order as an in- 
centive to his wrath. The force of the explo- 
sion which follows depends upon circumstances, 
but it is safe to count on the explosion every 
time. 



3 o8 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SOME CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 

Horsemanship and hard tramps — The family man at home — Rol- 
licking with the children — A champion of chaste living — 
White House hospitalities — The religious life of the President. 

"Did you go into literature with a view to 
making it your profession?" inquired an inter- 
viewer who had worked his way into Mr. 
Roosevelt's library and found it about equally 
devoted to books, pictures, stuffed game and 
live pets. 

"No," answered the host, "I went into it 
because I liked it." 

"Did you not take the usual course of 
poetry, fiction, essays and criticism?" 

"No, I studied American history and hunt- 
ing — especially big game." 

"Then you do not care a great deal for our 
modern literature of psychological analysis?" 

"I should care a great deal more for a first- 
rate American literature of outdoor sports. 
But I don't include among sports mere attend- 

309 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



ance at a horse-race, for instance; the only kind 
I am interested in arc those in which men take 
an active part themselves." 

This did not mean that he was indifferent 
to horses. From his cowboy days he has always 
had a lively taste lor riding, and his steed must 
he <mc of spirit or he will have none of it. Soon 
after he became President he wished to add a 
few good saddle-horses to his stable, and com- 
missioned an acquaintance to find them. 1 he- 
person thus honored was duly impressed with 
the gravity of the task, for it would never do, 
of course, to let a President of the United States 
break his neck. So he selected two animals dis- 
tinguished as much for their dignity of deport- 
ment as their excellence of pedigree, and sent 
them to the White blouse. The President or- 
dered them out for trial. The first horse cara- 
coled about with grace and precision, as if ac- 
customed to being ridden in a procession; the 
second began bv taking little mincing steps, and, 
when goaded bv main force into a gallop and 
put at a three-foot hurdle, meekly stopped and 
smell of the obstruction. With a deep sigh the 
rider alighted and threw his bridle to a groom. 

"NWll. sir?" said the man, inquiringly. 

"Oh, for goodness' sake, send them back," 
310 



AN AFTERNOON SPIN 



exclaimed the President. "I ordered horses — 
not rabbits!" 

Next to horseback-riding as an outdoor ex- 
ercise, Mr. Roosevelt esteems walking. But 
walking with him is not a leisurely stroll 
through the woods and fields or over beaten 
roads, but the strenuous sort which makes the 
nerves tingle as well as the blood. His great 
delight, when he needs a change from his usual 
canter, is to gather a group of congenial spirits 
and make a dash "on shanks' trotters" through 
the country on the outskirts of Washington, 
coming in at their head on the return as fresh 
as a daisy, while his companions trudge off in 
search of bath and bed. It gives him particu- 
lar pleasure, in organizing a walking party, to 
include at least one untried man. Such a tramp 
as he lays out enables him to measure the novi- 
tiate's mettle. 

One fine day about two years ago, he in- 
vited a few friends to an afternoon spin up the 
shore of the Potomac. A special invitation was 
extended to a newly appointed bureau chief on 
whom the President was depending for some 
courageous but delicate work. The chief was 
young, lithe of build, athletic in appearance, 
and it seemed desirable to put him to a test of 

3" 



I UK MAN ROOSEVELT 



endurance and ingenuity. Another person 
favored was an office-holder with a fair reputa- 
tion lor grit but too large a girth for his own 
good; the idea was to reduce this a little. The 
President, of course, set the pace with his long 
quick stride, and the rest ambled after as best 
they could. The shore path was pleasant 
enough and not too difficult till a point was 
reached where a stone-quarry jutted out into 
the river. The workmen had put a cable over 
one of the rock< which ran straight down into 
the water, to help them crawl around it; there 
was a boat at hand, also, for the use of any one 
who was afraid to trust himself to the cable. 

The party halted only a moment — just long 
enough to see how the land law "The boat for 
me," said a Senator who, though proportioned 
for agility, was a little out of practise and had 
a great respect for his own dignity. "For me, 
too," said the stout office-holder, dropping in 
alter the Senator and making a place ready for 
the President. "Meet me on the other side," 
laughed the President, ami started across the 
sheer face of the rock, disdaining the aid of the 
cable, but using toes and finger-tips to clutch 
at the little niches left hv the blasts. If he had 
missed his hold anywhere, he would have had a 

312 



HOME LIFE 



souse in ten feet of muddy water. But he didn't. 
His son Theodore and the new bureau chief 
followed where he led. All got home in safety 
some time after nightfall, and the next day the 
gossip of the town was their adventure at the 
big quarry rock. The minor members called 
it "scaling the Matterhorn"; the President 
called it "bully." 

Mr. Roosevelt's love of family and home 
amounts to a passion. I remember one even- 
ing when, to a party of friends around his table, 
he had been describing with his usual enthu- 
siasm the delights of his life on the Western 
plains, and some one turned to him with the 
remark: "With your love of that free existence, 
I wonder you ever settled down in the hum- 
drum East. Honestly, now, don't you wish you 
had been born and reared on a ranch?" 

An affirmative answer was on the tip of Mr. 
Roosevelt's tongue when he suddenly paused, 
and cast a quick glance, plainly involuntary and 
almost embarrassed, past the questioner, where 
it settled on our hostess with an expression which 
could not be mistaken. Then he began, hesi- 
tatingly: 

"No, because " 

"I know why," exclaimed one of the ladies. 

3 l 3 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



"Why?" lie asked, with an air of challenge. 

''Because you would not then have known 
Mrs. Roosevelt." 

"That was what I was going to say/' he con- 
fessed. It was a tribute Straight from the heart. 

The persistency of his refusal to let anything 
interrupt his daily exercise in the open, is 
matehed only by the unfailing regularity of the 
President's frolic with his children. Of the 
six, two have now passed beyond the age of 
rough-and-tumble play, but with the younger 
ones he can still be a child again for a little- 
while each day. One of his favorite sports in 
the old times used to be the game of bear. It 
was played on the floor if in the house, or on 
the grass outdoors, ami on all fours to preserve 
the dramatic realism. First he was a big bear 
with a terrifying growl, ami the others were the 
young hunters; then, when they lunl killed or 
captured the object of their chase, they became 
bears in turn and he the hunter. A convenient 
table oi" a bush with space to crawl under made 
a model den for Bruin, and almost anything 
answered for firearms for his pursuers. 

The most uncomfortable feature of the new 
arrangement of the White House, with the ex- 
ecutive offices SO far removed from the family 

.1'4 



WITH THE CHILDREN 



quarters, is that the little people can not peep 
in from the next room and say good night when 
the father is burning the midnight oil over his 
work for the state. It has its advantages from 
another point of view, however; as there has 
been no necessity, since the change, for inter- 
rupting a Cabinet meeting in order that the 
President might step into the corridor and 
"shoo" away two sturdy-lunged boys who were 
romping there. 

The family all have pets and are devoted 
to them. Archie, next to the youngest lad, has 
for his chief joy a pony, so ridiculously small 
that one looks to see the stalwart attendant who 
accompanies him pick it up and lift it over wet 
spots and hard places in the road. All the 
children are brought up to ride, from the time 
they are large enough to bestride a saddle. 
This is a part of the program of self-reliance 
and fearlessness mapped out for them. No veto 
is put upon their climbing propensities, and 
they make free with the trees and even with the 
architecture of the White House. The entire 
premises are theirs as long as they avoid being 
nuisances to persons who have business there. 

The President's letter on "race suicide," 
printed as a preface to Mrs. Van Vorst's book, 

3 l S 



i hi: man ko():>i;\ elt 



"The Woman Who Toils," has been so per- 
verted in meaning by some writers who have 
commented on it, that the mass of the public 
who have not read its text have obtained a very 
Strange idea of his views. The kernel of this 
deliverance is to be found in two sentences : " 1 f a 
man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, 
goes throughout life deprived of those highest ol 
all joys which spring only from home life, from 
the having and bringing up of many healthy 
children, I feel for them deep and respectful 
sympathy. . . . But the man or woman who 
deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so 
cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow 
and selfish as to dislike children, is in effect a 
criminal against the race ami should be an ob- 
ject of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy 
people." The letter is not, as so widely repre- 
sented, an instigation to a riot of physical forces 
in mankind, but an appeal to the moral being. 
It is merely a protest against a form of selfish- 
ness which robs nature of her perfect work. 

No better place than this, perhaps, can be 
found for mentioning one Other trait ol the 
President's which in our age of easy morals 
gives u- possessor a certain distinction. It bore 
fruit in a general order is>ued to the army by 

3 ' ( > 



CLEAN LIVING 



his direction in March, 1902, aimed against 
strong drink and licentiousness, and saying 
among other things: "It is the duty of regi- 
mental and particularly of company officers, to 
try by precept and example to point out to the 
men under their control, and particularly to 
the younger men, the inevitable misery and dis- 
aster which follow upon intemperance and upon 
moral uncleanliness and vicious living. The 
officers should, of course, remember always that 
the effect of what they say must depend largely 
upon the lives they themselves lead. As a na- 
tion, we feel keen pride in the valor, discipline 
and steadfast endurance of our soldiers, and 
hand in hand with these qualities must go the 
virtues of self-restraint, self-respect and self- 
control." 

And in a speech delivered to young men at 
Oyster Bay he went further and declared: "I 
am addressing strong, vigorous men who are en- 
gaged in the active, hard work of life, and there- 
fore men who will count for good or for evil, 
and it is peculiarly incumbent upon you who 
have strength to set a right example to others. 
I ask you to remember that you can not retain 
your self-respect if you are loose and foul of 
tongue, and that a man who is to lead a clean 

3 l 7 



THE MAX ROOSEVELT 



and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his 
Speech likewise is not clean and honorable." It 
will be a pleasant reflection tor Americans that 
their President is one of those men with whom 
chastity of living and purity of mind are some- 
thing more than a mere poetic ideal, and who 
believe that a race which has been made a little- 
lower than the angels may still be a little higher 
than the beasts. 

Nothing quite like the domestic life of the 
White House under the present administration 
has been witnessed before in our generation. 
Both the President and Mrs. Roosevelt are fond 
of their kind. The gratification of their social 
instinct takes the form of making their home a 
meeting-ground for persons both interesting and 
interested. The conventional bounds of so- 
called "society" are unknown to them when 
it comes to bringing such persons together. 
Men and women with live qualities, those 
who have done or arc doing some good work 
in the world, are their favorite guests. It 
may he to-day a clergyman whose pulpit tills 
the smallest place in his ambition and his 
"neighborhood club" the Largest; to-morrow a 
labor leader whose organization lias made itsell 
respected not only by it- fair treatment of the 

318 



WHITE HOUSE HOSPITALITY 



employer class but by its admirable discipline 
within its own membership; the next day a pro- 
fessional musician, or an explorer who has 
brought to light something that escaped all his 
predecessors in the same field, or the author of 
an epoch-making book. 

All sorts and conditions of men, in short, 
gather at the President's round table of de- 
mocracy. The social censors are becomingly 
shocked, of course. They can not but think that 
it cheapens the atmosphere of the first home 
in the land to bring so many persons into it, on 
a footing of equality, who are not familiar 
with the drawing-room code. They forget that 
achievement creates an aristocracy of its own, 
and that work for the world is the best breeding 
a man can enjoy, since it stimulates in him those 
traits of sincerity and self-forgetfulness which 
lie at the foundation of all good manners. 

Of the great receptions and state dinners it 
is needless to speak, as this class of functions 
varies from administration to administration 
only with the personalities of the men and 
women who attend them. The Roosevelts have 
improved upon precedent, it is true, by re- 
ducing the "crushes" to endurable proportions 
and trying to make the political dinners a little 

22 319 



THI MAN KOOSIATTT 



Less dreary. They have also introduced two 
novelties — the periodical musicale in winter, 
ami the garden-party in the season of green grass 

and dowers. The distinctive social feature of 
the administration is found in the private life 
of the Roosevelts. The hospitalities they dis- 
pense there are as unpretentious as their guests. 
This enables them to "keep open house" all the 
time. Simple little dinners, confined to a half- 
dozen friends, are their favorite entertainments. 
Enough formality is observed in the invitations 
to enable the persons invited to accommodate 
their other engagements to these, but that is all, 
and the notice may be very short. 

Luncheon is informal in every respect, in- 
cluding invitations. A morning caller who 
does not get through his talk may be invited nn 
the spot to come back at half past one, and an 
order sent to the steward to lav an additional 
plate. A telephone message, out of a clear sky 
as it were, may summon another guest, it the 
President happens to think suddenly of some 
one with whom he wishes to have a few min- 
utes' chat away from the official environment. 
Scarcely a Cabinet day goes by without one or 
more members staying after the morning meet- 
ing to lunch with the President 

320 



PRIVATE FINANCES 



Nothing like this absolutely unconventional 
freedom has been known since the civil war 
raised the scale of living in the White House as 
everywhere else. If all his unofficial entertain- 
ing were not done in the most modest fashion, 
Mr. Roosevelt's purse could not stand the drain, 
for in spite of the general impression otherwise, 
he is not a rich man and never was. His private 
means are an inheritance from his father. The 
father was a very well-to-do citizen for his day, 
but his day was one of smaller things, and his 
estate had to be divided between five children. 

Theodore, who had no start in the world but 
this, was not built for a money-maker. All his 
occupations have been such as consumed his sub- 
stance, and he has always refused to recoup his 
expenditures by anything that savored of specu- 
lation. To have done that would have violated 
a general scruple he entertains against gam- 
bling. It might also have involved him, with 
however innocent intent, in enterprises liable to 
be helped or embarrassed by his action as a 
public officer. As it is, he is one of the few men 
in American political life who have been for 
twenty years unceasingly in the public eye, 
against whom not even a hint has been thrown 
out on this score. 

321 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



But for the constant demand the publishers 
have made upon him he would have been in 
financial discomfort more than once; and this 
regardless of the fact that in dress, house-rent, 
and other necessary objects of expenditure, his 
family have never practised any more extrava- 
gance than in matters of pure luxury. Their 
habit has been to have that which was required 
by the passing conditions of their life, and as 
good of its kind as they could afford, and stop 
there; and they have carried into the White 
House the same generous but quiet manner of 
living which characterized them outside. 

Stories told about the President for the sake 
of making some particular trait conspicuous, 
often overshoot the mark. Not a few of these 
deal with him on his religious side. A clergy- 
man, for example, is quoted as telling how Mr. 
Roosevelt, in the full bloom of his early man- 
hood, left the Protestant Episcopal communion 
"because he had tired of its inanities," and was 
"attracted into the Reformed [Dutch] church 
by its robust virility." This narrative is inter- 
esting, but it lacks certain essentials of veracious 
history: Mr. Roosevelt could not have quitted a 
church with which he never was connected, nor 
could he have left it to enter a church of which 

322 



UNIVERSAL CHRISTIANITY 



he was already a member. The records show 
that he joined the Middle Collegiate church, in 
Second Avenue near Seventh Street, New York 
City, on December 2, 1874, when he was six- 
teen years old, and never withdrew from that 
connection. His father and grandfather were 
members of the same church, so that in a sense 
he may be considered to have been born into it. 
Mrs. Roosevelt was brought up a Protestant 
Episcopalian, and at various times in their mar- 
ried life, while moving from place to place, they 
have attended Sunday services together. Since 
their last advent in Washington they have di- 
vided, the President going to a Reformed 
church in Fifteenth Street, about ten minutes' 
walk from the White House, and Mrs. Roose- 
velt to old St. John's, just across Lafayette 
Square. Some of the children accompany one 
parent and some the other. 

Although the clergyman quoted went a good 
way astray on his facts, the idea he was trying 
to bring out was correct, that Mr. Roosevelt is 
contemptuous of mere formalism in religion as 
everywhere else. With ecclesiastical polemics 
he has as little patience as with cant. His name 
belongs somewhere in Abou Ben Adhem's list, 
with those whose first thought is practical hu- 

323 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



inanity; and by this standard he measures the 
religious quality in others. It makes absolutely 
no difference to him whether the men with 

whom lie has to do are Jews or Gentiles, Catho- 
lics or Protestants, Christians, Deists or Agnos- 
tics, as long as they live up to the best that is in 
them: he is with them then in spirit, whatever 
form or absence of form may distinguish their 
worship. He has no use for the devotee who 
praises God in the abstract and neglects his fel- 
low man in the concrete. He professes Chris- 
tianity himself, as he professes Republicanism, 
not because it is the only faith that draws good 
men to it, but because it contains most that ap- 
peals to him; his is the sort of Christianity that 
embraces whatever is best in all religions, and 
derives its vitality from its moral rather than 
its ritual code. 



3^4 



CHAPTER XIX 

CONCLUSION 

Unique feature of Mr. Roosevelt's career — Purpose of this review 
— The future. 

In one respect the career of Theodore Roose- 
velt is almost unique in our modern public life: 
the American people have watched him grow. 
Most of his contemporaries who have become 
powerful and famous have burst upon the notice 
of their fellow countrymen within a very short 
time of the attainment of their highest ambi- 
tions. Lincoln had cut but a small figure in 
Congress before his nomination for President. 
Grant was earning a precarious livelihood in 
the back country when called to his first com- 
mand in the civil war. Cleveland compassed 
the whole stride from mayor of an interior city 
to President-elect of the United States in two 
years. But thousands of citizens in remote 
quarters of the Union had heard, as long ago as 
1883, of that curio in rough-and-tumble politics: 

3 2 5 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



the young "dude Lawmaker" at Albany whose 
speeches were verbal cataracts bursting through 

clenched teeth, who hunted jobbery in term- 
time and grizzly bears in recess, and who was 
not too good or nice to hobnob with his col- 
leagues of all classes. 

They had their interest quickened when they 
saw this extraordinary youngster of twenty-six 
heading his State delegation to the Republican 
national convention at Chicago, to resist in vain 
the nomination of Blaine for President. They 
recognized in him the true popular leader when 
he coined for the Erie Railroad ring and their 
corrupt coparceners the title, "the wealthy crim- 
inal classes." They saw him come to the front 
in national affairs when as Civil Service Com- 
missioner, the war-club of reform in hand, he 
dealt blow after blow on the heads of bigger 
men till he had made them respect the Commis- 
sion and bow to its authority. They saw him 
later bring order into a chaotic naval establish- 
ment, and prepare it for instant service in a war 
which was to restore ii^ old prestige. They 
icad of the Rough Riders' campaign, ami 
abated none of (heir liking for its author be- 
cause, in Ins youthful enthusiasm, lie felt as if 
the whole conquest of Cuba had been the 

3- 6 



A NATIONAL FIGURE 



achievement of his regiment. They smiled a 
little at the whirlwind of felt hats and khaki 
breeches that swept over New York in the guise 
of a canvass for the Governorship, but were not 
sorry when the settling dust revealed the young 
soldier seated in the executive chair. Then 
came the unparalleled scenes at Philadelphia 
ending in his nomination for the Vice-Presi- 
dency, and his novel methods, after election, as 
steersman of the Senate's deliberations. 

This series of events was but a long-drawn 
prelude to the drama of an administration quite 
as individual in its way as any of the traits of 
the picturesque figure at the head of it. It had 
prepared the people to know the man as no 
other President had been known. They felt 
almost as if they had been his neighbors from 
his childhood up. Though to his actual inti- 
mates he was always Theodore, to the great 
mass of the populace he was "Teddy" — the boy 
who had developed under their own eyes from 
a precocious beginner to a well-rounded man 
of affairs. 

It can not truthfully be said that such famil- 
iarity is always of advantage to its object. The 
babe whose birth we recall never quite matures 
in our imagination. Any mistake of judgment 

327 



THE MAN KOOSEYKLT 



he commits at forty-five we are apt to attribute 

to his general mental unripeness, almost as we 
diil the tollies of his infancy. Theodore Roose- 
velt is in double danger of suffering injustice In 
this way, because his natural exuberance of 
manner intensifies the illusion of his youthful- 
neSS. He is now really past the age which sci- 
ence has fixed as the meridian of the human 
powers yet in the popular fancy he is still, and 
probably will always remain, the breezy lad of 
the early nineties. 

Nevertheless, his growth has been real. He 
is a larger ami broader man than he was when 
he began his Presidency. He was then labor- 
ing under a sense of the tremendous responsi- 
bility so suddenly thrust upon him, and the 
sobering effect of that experience added ten 
years to his maturity in as many days. Every 
succeeding twelvemonth has carried him fur- 
ther in the same direction. He has made his 
mistakes; he will make more of them, unless he 
ceases to be human -which for his sake and ours 
alike may I leaven forfend, since his red-blooded 
humanity is what makes him lovable with all 
his faults. 

Calmly reviewing his career, the nation has 
cause to be devoutly thankful that he came to 

328 



SOBERING REALITIES 



its highest office over so terrible a road. The 
cloud of sorrow and shame that hung over the 
whole country was bound to be impressive in 
itself, but its effect on him was deepened by the 
realization that he had simply succeeded to a 
trust, to carry to completion the policies mapped 
out by his predecessor. This curbed the im- 
petuous impulses which might have wrecked his 
administration had he originally entered the 
White House by virtue of a popular majority 
in his own right. The interval preceding his 
appearance as a candidate for the Presidency 
itself has been sufficient to cool his first ardor 
and readjust his point of view on many matters 
of grave public concern. As a man of con- 
science and conviction, he doubtless would have 
got himself under some restraint in any event, 
but perhaps in no other circumstances under so 
much. 

My task is almost finished. The reader was 
duly warned in its preface that it was not to be 
a biography. It is not even a well-balanced and 
fully colored portrait. I have aimed merely to 
give Americans of the rank and file a little more 
vivid impression of the American at the front. 
Albeit the people have watched the develop- 
ment of his career from the start, most of them 

329 



THE MAX ROOSEVELT 



have remained neeessarily at a distance. 1 have- 
tried to bring them closer to him, so that, with- 
out losing their perspective view of the leader, 
they could see more of the man. 

For every one touch of nature that I have 
tried to put into the picture I have had to leave 
a dozen out. For instance, while I have made 
no attempt to minimize Mr. Roosevelt's mis- 
takes, I might have gone further and shown how 
carefully he avoids making the same mistake 
twice. I have alluded to his versatility; but I 
did not mention the time I found him, while 
waiting for an important conference, refresh- 
ing his mind for a few minutes with an Italian 
text of Dante in one hand and Carlyle's transla- 
tion in the other. I have spoken of his con- 
tempt for mere formalism; but I might have 
added that, though insisting upon all the respect 
due to the Presidential office as much when he 
as when another fills it, he has never vet become 
accustomed to taking precedence <*! Mrs. Roose- 
velt or to going through a door before any 
woman. 

The stories printed about him are as the 
sands of the sea for multitude, and perhaps 
equally trustworthy as a foundation to build on. 
Sometimes their fault lies deep in their own con- 

330 



AMUSING FICTIONS 



stitution. A French journalist who had been 
traveling in the United States wrote for his dear 
public in Paris an account of a luncheon to 
which he was invited at the White House, and 
described the adjournment of the host and the 
male guests afterward to one of the parlors. 
The President, he said, was in the midst of his 
cigar and engaged in telling a good story, when 
one of the liveried lackeys reminded him that 
smoking was not allowed in that room. So the 
whole party was compelled to remove to a cor- 
ridor, where the President, though meekly 
obedient, held forth with much eloquence on 
the nuisance of a system which gave the servants 
of the executive mansion so much authority over 
its official occupant. I regret to say that this 
entertaining narrative was widely copied, with 
the insignia of belief, in the American press. 
Its percentage of truth each reader may calcu- 
late for himself, by bearing in mind that the 
White House has no liveried lackeys, and that 
the President never has used tobacco in his life. 
And yet this is as near as most of the stories get 
to the truth. 

Sometimes these tales are only half told, and 
it is usually the better half that is missing. 
When Mr. Roosevelt was Vice-President he 

33 1 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



violated all precedent by appointing a colored 
man a messenger in the Senate. The fact was 
published from Maine to California, but not 
the reason, which was far more interesting. 
This man he had found at Albany, a messenger 
in the Governor's office, holding over from the 
days of Roswell P. Flower. A boy baby was 
born to the messenger. Had he been a syco- 
phant or a time-server, he would have remem- 
bered that Mr. Flower was a Democrat and had 
ceased to be useful as a patron, while Mr. Roose- 
velt was a Republican with possible favors to 
bestow; but in defiance of the dictates of policy, 
he named the child in honor of Mr. Flower and 
frankly told Mr. Roosevelt that he had done 
this because Mr. Flower had been good to him. 
He had little suspicion of the impression that 
trifling incident made upon the mind of his new- 
chief, with whom loyalty stands forth as the first 
among virtues. From that day the negro be- 
came a fixture with Mr. Roosevelt, who brought 
him from Albany to Washington the instant a 
place could be found to put him into. 

Mr. Roosevelt has been represented as pretty 
nearly everything he is not: as "bidding for the 
labor vote" because the door of the White House- 
now swings open as i reels to the man who works 

33^ 



STANDARD OF JUDGMENT 

with his hands as to the man who works with 
his head; as the foe of capital, because he has 
demanded that the rich shall obey the law as 
well as the poor; as a negro-worshiper, because 
he has insisted that a black skin covers the same 
body of human rights as a white one; as the 
slave of a political machine, because, instead of 
destroying an agency which his next successor 
would only restore, he has tried to turn it to some 
purpose not unworthy; as a rash and hare- 
brained youth, because he does what other men 
are thinking. 

In my endeavor to dispel some of these arbi- 
trary misconceptions, I have aimed not to argue 
his cause, but simply to present as honest a sketch 
as I could of the Theodore Roosevelt I have 
known. In the end we must judge him by the 
use he has made of his own talents in the light 
of his own moral promptings, and this requires 
that we shall have before us an actuality, not an 
ideal; a living being, not a mere mental image 
conjured up by the politicians or by the capital- 
ists or by the demagogues; a portrait, not of the 
man as he might have been, or of the man as we 
might have liked to find him, or of the man we 
think we should have been in his place, but of 
the man as he is. Of that man — the real Man 

333 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Roosevelt — each reader must form his individ- 
ual estimate. 

Almost as 1 am writing these last lines in a 
book which has been in the best sense a labor of 
love, the peace of the night is broken by the 
screech of steam whistles, the blare of horns, and 
the clang of many bells, while the deep-voiced 
clock in a neighboring room strikes the hour of 
twelve. The din outside is the city's welcome 
to a year just born. 

We do these things oddly- Our solemn 
times are those we greet with deafening clamor. 
Before this new year follows the old into the 
silent halls of history, we shall go through an- 
other period of uproar. Amid bursting bombs, 
the roll of drums, the hiss of rockets and the 
crash of military bands, the citizens of our re- 
public will be called to the most sacred duty 
that devolves on a free people the choice of a 
servant who shall be also their chief ruler. 

Upon whom will the honor fall? W hat 
form will it take? Will it be a summons to an 
untried hand, or a verdict of -Well done"? 



33+ 



INDEX 



Addicks, J. Edward, 146. 
Agassiz, Alexander, 145. 
Ahlwardt, Dr. Hermann, 

284. 
Alaska boundary commission, 

206. 
Alger, Russell A., 201. 
Allee, J. Frank, 152. 
Arbitration, coal strike, 169, 

236, 241, 274; Hague 

Tribunal of, 205. 
Aristocracy of achievement, 

319. 

Author's preface, v. 

Bacon, Robert, 127. 
Bacon, Theodore, 27. 
Beirut, squadron sent to, 12. 
"Best he could, the," 103. 
Bidwell, George R., 76, 129, 

275- 

Blaine, James G., 17, 33. 

Bliss, Cornelius N., 201. 

Bosses, political, in the Uni- 
ted States Senate, 125, 
136; on their better side, 
144. 

Bowen, Herbert W., 208. 

Bristow, Joseph L., 100. 

Bryan, William J., 165. 

Burton, Joseph R., 136. 

Byrne, William M., 147. 
23 



Cabinet, President Roosevelt 

and his, 71, 83. 
Capital and labor, 232. 
Carnegie, Andrew, 255. 
Census spoilsmen's trick, 

^ l8a 

Cervera's squadron, 200. 

Chastity, admonition to, 317. 

Children, romping with, 314. 

Chronology of Theodore 
Roosevelt's career, ix. 

Civil Service Commission 
and Congress, 38, 116; 
Commission's new policy, 
35; examinations for in- 
spectors of customs, 50; 
examinations for New 
York police, 44; Southern 
quotas filled, 36. 

Clarendon Hall meeting, 
247. 

Clark, E. E., 246. 

Clarkson, James S., 42, 131. 

Cleveland, Grover, 20, 120, 
166, 169. 

Colonies, theory of, 265. 

Commerce, Department of, 
81, 254. 

Congress and the Civil Serv- 
ice Commission, 38, 116. 

Contents, table of, xi. 

Corbin, Henry C, 296. 



335 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Cortelyou, George B., 81. 
( rcorge B., [36. 

Criticism, offensive and in- 
offensive, /S08. 

Crum, William IX, 225. 

Cuban reciprocity, 102. 

Customs inspectors, civil- 
service examinations h>r. 
50. 

Daniels, Benjamin F., 66. 
William R., 17^. 

Delaware politics, 102, 147. 
Dewey, George, 204. 
Disappointments turned into 

success, 4. 
"Doddling" defined, 296. 

Eaton, 1 torman 15.. J J. 

Edmunds, Geor-e F., 17. 
56, 178. 

Election of 1904, approach- 
in-, 335- 

Evans, Henrj Clay, 275. 

Exen ise, robust, 198, 31 1. 

Fitchie, Thomas 1 $3. 
Five a nl fare veto, '■ . 
"Flag shall 'staj put,' " 269. 
Flower, Roswell P., J3 '• 
I oraker, Joseph B., 1 j6. 
Franchise tax legislation in 

. \ ork, 27K. 
1 , e Trade Club in New 

\ ork, 2S7- 

( }age, Lyman J., 73»83i ' -", 

2( 'I. 

G ng ahead," 7- 
( iorman, Arthur I'., 40. [45, 
165. 



( ]t,\ eminent Printing Office, 
civil-service reform in, 234. 
Gray, ( reorge, 166, 169. 
Greene, Francis W, 125. 

Hanna, Marcus A., 136, 

158, 174. 
Hendricks, Francis, 124. 
Hess, Jacob, 178. 
Hicks. William H., I37« 
Hill, David I)., 165. 
"Horses, not rabbits," 3 IQ - 
Hunting, love of, 197. 

Illustrations, list of, \i\. 

Immigration Office contro- 
versy, [33. 

Imperialism, 250, 263. 

Impulse, a creature of, 272. 

Independent-. first 

with the, 16; second break 
with the. 25. 

Indianola post-office case, 94, 
229. 

Jenkins, Micah, 22s. 
Jew - hat in j campaign 
checked, 284. 

Jewish protest to the O/ar, 
209. 

Jones, Thomas ( r., 124. 
Judges in New York re- 
buked, 190. 

Kishenev massacre, 208. 
Knox, Philander C, 81. 

Labor and capital, - 1 \2. 

"I ;; •'." the, IO3. 

I ,,-. Robert C., 224. 






33 6 



INDEX 



Letter, unpublished, of 1898, 

30. 
Liquor-selling on Sunday, 

in, 186; to minors, 112. 
Literary enterprises, 302. 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 53, 

133. 
Long, John D.,79, 201, 203. 
Low, Seth, 128, 139. 
Loyalty appreciated, 161, 

332. 
Lying, accusations of, 191. 
Lyons, Judson W., 161. 

Maclay, Edgar Stanton, 297. 
Manning, Daniel, 145. 
McClain, Penrose A., 137. 
McCoach, William, 138. 
McKinley, William, 72, 73, 

197, 201. 
McMichael, Clayton, 137. 
McSweeney, Edward F., 

133. 
Miles, Nelson A., 296. 
Miller, Warner, 179. 
Miller, William A., 235. 
Mitchell, John, 169. 
Monroe doctrine, 209. 
Moody, William H., 80. 
Munay, Joseph E., 58, 135. 

Navy, buying coalers for 
the, 107; prepared for 
war, 298. 

Negro question, 94, 213. 

Newspaper reading, rapid, 
307. 

New York, Assistant Treas- 
urer at, 127; governorship, 
5, 28, 123, 278; mayor- 



alty campaign of 1886, 4, 
168; mayoralty campaign 
of 1901, 139; police, 5, 
44, 49, 63, in, 182, 189, 
247, 249, 284. 

Nields, John P., 154. 

Northern Securities Com- 
pany, 250. 

Officeholders in politics, 

138. 
Ohio Republican Convention 

indorsement, 163. 
Olney, Richard, 165. 
Oxnard, Henry T., 105. 

Panama, recognition of Re- 
public of, 7. 

Pardon papers characteris- 
tically indorsed, 287. 

Partridge, John N., 125. 

Payn, Louis F., 125. 

Payne, Henry C, 83, 92, 
149, 151. 

Peking expedition of 1900, 
205. 

Penrose, Boies, 137. 

Pets in the Roosevelt family, 
197- m 

Philippine Islands, 204, 263. 

Piatt, Thomas C, 23, 120, 
123, 136, 145. 

Plimley, William, 127. 

Police administration in New 
York charged with ineffi- 
ciency, 189; and the civil 
service, 44; good work by, 
49, 249; night visits to, 
182. 

Postal scandals, 96. 



337 



THE MAN ROOSEVELT 



Powderly, Terence V., 133- 
Preface, author's, v. 
Presidency, aspiration 

second term of, 1 55- 
Presidential campaign 

1884, 16, 56, 178; 

1898, 22; of 1904 

320. 



for 

of 

of 

155. 



Quarrels in army and navy, 

296. 
Quay, Matthew S., 1 35. 

137, 145- 

Race suicide, 316. 

Reed, Thomas B., 291. 

Religious faith and practise, 
322. 

Riis, Jacob A., 63. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, chro- 
nology of career, a ; an- 
tithetical traits 3; secret 
of success, 1 5 ; reasons for 
remaining a Republican, 
20, 26; Governor of New 
York, 5, 28, 123, 278; 
Civil-Service Commission- 
er, }3, - s - »5, 192; Po- 
lio- Commissioner, 44, 6 (, 
1 ! 1, [82, 247, 2S4; classes 

f friends, S4; relations 
with Cabinet, 71. 83; >'"- 
patience with red tape. 7 j, 
296, 300; action in Indi- 
anola case, 95; and the 
po tal scandals, 98, 100; 

and Delaware politics, 

[02, 146; "the larger 
od" and "the best he 



could," 103 ; Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy, 5, 
107, 200, 298; buying 
coalers for the navy, 107; 
enforcement of Sunday 
law in New \ ork, III; 
selling liquor to minors, 
112; Shidy case, 11O; re- 
lations with Senatorial 
bosses, 120; breakfast with 
Piatt, 123; appointment, 
made as Governor, 124; 
Assistant Treasurership at 
New York, 127 ; New York 
Custom - House changes, 
129; settling an Immigra- 
tion Service quarrel, 133 ; 
experiences with the Q 
machine, 137 ; disposing of 
warring bosses, 142; trou- 
ble with J. E. Addicks, 
[46; and William M. 
Hvrne, 148; conclusion in 
the Todd case, 153; sec- 
ond term aspirations, 1 ^s ; 
withdrawal of rivals, 1 58 J 
and the Hanna "boom," 
1 sS ; appreciation of loy- 
alty, [61, 532; indorse 
ment by < )hio convention, 
\(>k 174: relations with 
I )emocratic candid ; 
if,;; speech on the five- 
cent fare veto, [66; defeat 
for mayoralty, 168; organ- 
izing the coal-Strike arbi- 
tration, 169; fighting 
methi ds, i; 1 ': love of 
sparring, 177: :ini1 rne 

Utica 1 •iiir.cntion of 1S8 f, 



338 



INDEX 



178; outwitting the cen- 
sus spoilsmen, 180; max- 
im about the short sword, 
182; playing Harun-al- 
Raschid with the police, 
182; review of anti-Roose- 
velt parade, 186; hitting 
back at an accusing news- 
paper, 189; rebuke to ju- 
diciary, 190; favorite re- 
tort, 191 ; and the lying 
Cabinet officer, 192; not 
a lover of wanton war, 
194; habits in hunting, 
sports, and exercise, 198; 
expectation of war with 
Spain, 199; plan for in- 
tercepting Cervera's squad- 
ron, 200; address to Mc- 
Kinley Cabinet, 202 ; au- 
thor of fateful order to 
Dewey, 204; ambition for 
United States as a world 
power, 205, 211; theories 
of international arbitra- 
tion, 205 ; triumph of 
Alaskan policy, 206; atti- 
tude toward Venezuela, 
206; version of Monroe 
doctrine, 208 ; and the 
Kishenev incident, 208 ; 
plans for the South and the 
negro, 213; independent 
appointments, 215, 217; 
entertains Booker T. 
Washington, 217; assailed 
in the South, 221; visits 
to Tennessee, South Caro- 
lina, and Mississippi, 224, 
225 ; appointment of Col- I 

339 



lector Crum, 225 ; answer 
to Charleston critics, 228; 
inconsistent treatment by 
Southern whites, 230 ; 
called a demagogue, 232 ; 
belief in organization of 
labor, 233 ; and the Miller 
case, 235 ; and the Arizona 
miners' riots, 241 ; and 
the anthracite coal strike, 
241 ; meeting with strikers 
at Clarendon Hall, 247 ; 
treatment of trusts, 250; 
and the Carnegie founda- 
tion, 255 ; former member- 
ship of Free-Trade Club, 
257; views on the tariff, 
259; attitude toward re- 
vision, 263 ; Philippine 
policy, 263 ; opinion of 
colonies, 265 ; speech to 
Sons of American Revolu- 
tion, 269; accused of im- 
pulsiveness, 272; rescue of 
a horse, 273 ; rapidity of 
action on coal strike, 274; 
premature announcement 
of purposes, 275 ; tricks of 
speech, 276; franchise tax 
policy, 278 ; and the Ahl- 
wardt episode, 284; in- 
dorsing a scoundrel's par- 
don papers, 287 ; a man of 
many parts, 2go; fondness 
for natural history, 291 ; 
equilibrium of opinions, 
292 ; superlative style, 
294; judgment of men, 
295 ; dislike of "dod- 
dling," 296; breaking up 



THE MAN ROOSKVELT 



feuds, 296; preparing the 
navy lor war, 298; a> an 
author, 301 ; specimen ol 
handwriting, 302; meth- 
ods of composition, 304; 
book, reviewing, 306; man- 
ncr of reading newspapers, 
307 ; attitude toward criti- 
cism, 30S ; habits of 1 
cise, 310; tribute to Mrs. 
Roosevelt, 313; romping 
with the children, 314; 
letter on race suicide, 310; 
personal morals, 317 ; do- 
mestic and social Life, 313, 
318; private means, 32 1 ; 
religious affiliations, 322; 
growth watt hed by the 
people, 325 ; perils of boy- 
ishness, 327; occupations 
of spare moments, 330; 
fictions about, 330; in the 
coming campaign, 335; 
what of the future? 335. 
Roosevelt, Mrs. Theodore, 
I<U, 221, $13, • 

Root, Elihu, 80, 128, 170. 
Rough Riders, 61, 65. 
Roulhac, Thomas R., 224. 

Sampson, William T., 296. 
Sargent, Frank P., 1 J4. 
Schley, Winfield S., 206. 
Senate, bossism in United 

tes, [25, 1 $6. 
Shaw, Leslie M., 83. 
Sheldon, George !'.. 1 -27. 
Shidy, Hamilton W., 116. 
Silver free coinage propa- 
ganda, 87. 



Smith, Charles Emory, 79, 

92. 

Social life at the W 
House, 31S. 

"Sociologist" defined, 245. 

Sons oi American Revolu- 
tion, 21 

Southern policy, 21 {. 

Spain, war with, 5, 199, 204. 

Speculative scandals un- 
known, 321. 

Speech, tricks of, 276. 

Sp .irts, manly, 197. 

Stranahan, Nevada N., 76, 
130. 

Straus, Oscar S., 146. 

Sunday closing in New 
York, in, 186. 

Superlative style, 2' 14. 

Sword, maxim ab^ut the 
short, 182. 

Tariff question under Roose- 
velt administration, 259. 
Thompson, 1 [ugh S., I '"• 
Todd, Huldah B., 151. 
Trusts, regulation of, 250. 

Unions, trade, 2 J J. 

United States as a world 
po .er, 205, 211 J 

Corporation, 250, 255. 

Van Vorst, Mrs. John, $16. 
Venezuela troubles of [9031 

206, " , < , »7- 
Vers ''ilit\ . marvel of, 290. 
Vice Presidenq of United 

States, (,. 57, J3I. 



340 



INDEX 



Wakeman, Wilbur F., 129. 

War and peace, 193. 

Ware, Eugene F., 275. 

Washington, Booker T., 
161, 217. 

"Wealthy criminal class," 
168. 

Wharton, William F., 33. 

Whitehead, George W., 131. 

White House entertain- 
ments, 318. 



Williams, William, 135. 
Wilson, Edgar S., 224. 
Wimberley, Augustus T., 

275. 
Wood, Leonard, 60. 
Wright, Carroll D., 274. 
Wright, Luke E., 224. 

Young, Samuel B. M., 62. 
Youthfulness, perils of, 327. 



(l) 



THE END 



34 1 



" EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ IT." 

— The Ne<ws, Providence. 

The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson. 

By Thomas E. Watson, Author of " The Story of 
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Mr. Watson long since acquired a national reputation in connection 
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